Zoe Ward appointed to the FA Council

[A Load of Squit 5,161]

Is this significant or more procedural?

Fresh face in FA Council 

Norwich City's highly-rated business and project director Zoe Ward has been appointed to the FA Council. It is to be hoped that Ward, who has also worked for Liverpool, Fulham and the Premier League during more than 20 years in the game, will bring some much-needed freshness and dynamism to the blazer brigade.

The web site lists her amongst the Premier League representatives.

Representatives of The Premier League

P Barber (2016-2017, 2018), Brighton & Hove Albion FC
P McCormick (2015), Premier League
R Caplehorn (2016), Tottenham Hotspur FC
P Alexander (2012, 2014-2017, 2018), Crystal Palace FC
R Britain (2019), Manchester Utd FC
C Crown (2021), Brentford FC
Z Ward (2021), Norwich City FC

[Christoph Stiepermann 1,135]

Hopefully she brings some honesty and integrity and questions why officials are instructed to fix certain results in games against us. I'm sure they're all getting brown envelopes by Sky, so i doubt her or anyone else at the club would get an honest answer, but I hope it's at least brought up. Just come in hot with Pukki's goal v Spurs or Jerome's disallowed goal against Palace (Two rich trendy, fashionable London clubs....hmmm) because I'd love an explanation as much as any top level official at the club. 

Edited September 13, 2021 by Christoph Stiepermann

[All the Germans 1,075]

1 hour ago, Christoph Stiepermann said:

Hopefully she brings some honesty and integrity and questions why officials are instructed to fix certain results in games against us. I'm sure they're all getting brown envelopes by Sky, so i doubt her or anyone else at the club would get an honest answer, but I hope it's at least brought up. Just come in hot with Pukki's goal v Spurs or Jerome's disallowed goal against Palace (Two rich trendy, fashionable London clubs....hmmm) because I'd love an explanation as much as any top level official at the club. 

Yeah, right on, also, the Premier League paid those Chinese to unleash COVID as they knew that without crowds it'd diminish our chances of staying up that season. You keep flying the flag. I also think the Premier League faked the moon landing, arranged 911, killed both Princess Dianna and JFK and Jimmy Saville isn't actually dead but the secret leader of them but nobody else thinks like you and me...

[Taiwan Canary 144]

Occam's razor says Christoph is on to something.

[BroadstairsR 2,159]

CS is on to something, although I certainly don't think brown envelopes are involved.

I cannot particularly recall any of these crucial/weird/narrow decisions going our way, more they always seem to go the way of the bigger boys and with appalling consistency.

It seems to be a consistent trend to the point that it is expected as a matter of course.

Probably, though, more a result of officials being seemingly in awe of the game's hierarchy, to the point of being scared of it. 'Fergie time' was a similar anomaly.

Hooper was (scared) and was like a frightened rabbit in the headlights, and who could blame any City supporter suspecting foul play  in that disgracefully biased display ... and it will rankle with me for evermore.

It's the easy way out to rule against the small fry, and almost amounts to an inexcusable form of bullying. 

Come on Ms. Ward, fly that flag. 

Edited September 14, 2021 by BroadstairsR

[canarydan23 4,060]

9 hours ago, All the Germans said:

Yeah, right on, also, the Premier League paid those Chinese to unleash COVID as they knew that without crowds it'd diminish our chances of staying up that season. You keep flying the flag. I also think the Premier League faked the moon landing, arranged 911, killed both Princess Dianna and JFK and Jimmy Saville isn't actually dead but the secret leader of them but nobody else thinks like you and me...

We're actually approaching the point where the belief that there is nothing fishy about Premier League officiating is tinfoil hat territory. So this doesn't really work.

[TIL 1010 4,737]

Glad she has the time to spare from her busy schedule of running Norwich City FC with her husband.

[BobLoz3 492]

5 minutes ago, TIL 1010 said:

Glad she has the time to spare from her busy schedule of running Norwich City FC with her husband.

She probably hasn't but wanted to do it. Why wouldn't she want to be involved with the FA Council? Another thing to put on an already impressive CV.

[Mr Angry 1,554]

13 hours ago, Christoph Stiepermann said:

Hopefully she brings some honesty and integrity and questions why officials are instructed to fix certain results in games against us. I'm sure they're all getting brown envelopes by Sky, so i doubt her or anyone else at the club would get an honest answer, but I hope it's at least brought up. Just come in hot with Pukki's goal v Spurs or Jerome's disallowed goal against Palace (Two rich trendy, fashionable London clubs....hmmm) because I'd love an explanation as much as any top level official at the club. 

Delia must have been in on this from the start too, otherwise she would have said something about it as it's so obvious. Unless she's been replaced by one of the lizards 🤣

[Graham Paddons Beard 2,429]

2 hours ago, TIL 1010 said:

Glad she has the time to spare from her busy schedule of running Norwich City FC with her husband.

Zoe is never going to turn down an opportunity to network in this sort of company and nor should she. Congratulations to her . 

[A Load of Squit 5,161]

1 hour ago, Mr Angry said:

Delia must have been in on this from the start too, otherwise she would have said something about it as it's so obvious. Unless she's been replaced by one of the lizards 🤣

Delia is too busy writing posts on here using her nom de plume 'Big Vince'. 

[TIL 1010 4,737]

1 hour ago, Graham Paddons Beard said:

Zoe is never going to turn down an opportunity to network in this sort of company and nor should she. Congratulations to her . 

Congratulations indeed but stretching her a bit further as she and hubby run this club from top to bottom and inside out make no mistake about that.

[Nuff Said 5,119]

3 minutes ago, TIL 1010 said:

Congratulations indeed but stretching her a bit further as she and hubby run this club from top to bottom and inside out make no mistake about that.

That is kind of their job though?

[Mello Yello 2,289]

Congratulations to Zoe on her new appointment......Right then, how long before she's gonna be a contestant on 'Strictly?'......

[TIL 1010 4,737]

1 minute ago, Nuff Said said:

That is kind of their job though?

So it was with Ben Kensell which sort of begs the question as to why exactly he went ? I will leave you to join the dots.

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

Zoe Ward sounds linked to Covid.

[PurpleCanary 5,557]

40 minutes ago, TIL 1010 said:

So it was with Ben Kensell which sort of begs the question as to why exactly he went ? I will leave you to join the dots.

I can offhand think of three plausible reasons, so it could be one by itself, or a combination of two, or all three together. I will leave posters to join up the invisible dots.🤓

[TIL 1010 4,737]

7 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

I can offhand think of three plausible reasons, so it could be one by itself, or a combination of two, or all three together. I will leave posters to join up the invisible dots.🤓

The clue was in my previous post.

[Duncan Edwards 2,231]

1 hour ago, TIL 1010 said:

Congratulations indeed but stretching her a bit further as she and hubby run this club from top to bottom and inside out make no mistake about that.

Another couple of defeats and I'm fairly sure we'll be back to Delia running things..😀

[TIL 1010 4,737]

1 minute ago, Duncan Edwards said:

Another couple of defeats and I'm fairly sure we'll be back to Delia running things..😀

If Webber and Ward leave that will be the only option.

[Nuff Said 5,119]

2 minutes ago, TIL 1010 said:

If Webber and Ward leave that will be the only option.

Until we start to win games, at which point it will be all Webber and Farke's doing.

[PurpleCanary 5,557]

1 hour ago, TIL 1010 said:

The clue was in my previous post.

I got the clue. I suspect one or both of the other reasons played some part.

[Worthy Nigelton 1,043]

Any industry where there is that much money flying about will have some form of corruption, and we know football has at various points had dodgy dealings. Look at Allardyce and even Fegie and their choice of certain agents. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that these things go on. However, I think it's more just that it is far easier to make a bad decision against us than it is the big teams. Our bad calls get forgotten about pretty quickly, ones against the big boys get analysed over and over again and refs get hung out to dry. I dont blame them in many ways. What is frustrating is that I thought VAR would sort this but it has had little to no impact at all.

[TheGunnShow 5,937]

The real problem with the rules is that FIFA and the IFAB make the mistake of thinking problems that can be relatively satisfactorily resolved in-game at the top level can also be suitably resolved at lower level, and that rules which can be reasonably sensibly applied at the top level with a referee, two assistants and a fourth official, simply cannot at local level where you have a referee if you're lucky.

Offside's hard enough to judge with the basic premise - are they in an offside position when the ball is played? Unlike a few on here, I do find the IFAB decisions / clarifications of Law very clear, however it doesn't do anything to aid ease of applying them at high speed when a decision is usually needed right away.

In other words, I'm saying VAR means FIFA / IFAB can be prone to thinking they can get away with more complicated rules in a bid for perceived fairness, but in doing so they ruin the game at grass roots level. Put the offside rule back to its old basics - if an attacking player is ahead of the ball and ahead of the second-last defender at the time an attacker plays the ball forward, he's offside. Leave a margin of doubt on the lines, and that solves most problems.

Also, the other problem with VAR is this tendency for everyone to referee a foul "frame-by-frame" instead of looking at the incident in its entirety, leading to often a wildly different, it not indeed downright stupid conclusion to be drawn.