AS too many readers will know from experience, while a good referee can make a football match, a bad one can ruin it.

If the late Gerald Ashby was ever blamed for the latter during his 27-year refereeing career, we'd be staggered.

The one thing which he never lost sight of was that his sport was about people, those on the pitch and those who'd paid their money to watch and be critical.

It would have been easy to do. Let's face it, we're talking about an age when deep-rooted love for the game has become buried beneath layer after layer of commerciality and - as Roy Keane once so eloquently put it - plates of corporate prawn sandwiches.

Not Ashby. His reputation as a calm thinker, and an outstanding communicator, earned him the respect of players, coaches and fellow referees.

That was the case from the moment he began officiating in local leagues in 1971 to his last match as a Premier League referee in May, 1998.

Indeed, anyone at his funeral, yesterday, might have reflected that so many of those qualities are missing from life in general these days.

How many businesses lack a fair-mind in the man or woman in charge? How many lack a manager with a genuine feel for the job, and the touch to make the most of it?

When friends and players talk of Gerald Ashby, words like "willing" and "dignified" pepper the conversation.

For a man in black, that accolade speaks volumes. For the rest of us, it's not a bad standard to strive for.