Lewis Dunk’s red card offers a chance for ALL referees to get tough – but will they?

What happens in a split second can be ultimately game-changing and have far-reaching consequences.

Albion skipper and club legend Lewis Dunk received a straight red card 72 minutes into Albion’s thrilling 3-2 win at Nottingham Forest last Saturday.

On the back of referee Anthony Taylor awarding Forest a penalty, Dunk initially received a yellow card for dissent, before allegedly using a personal insult to the Manchester-based official and getting immediately dismissed.

If regular readers of these ramblings think I’m going to use this week’s offering to hang, draw and quarter Dunk, think again.

As in life, the beautiful game is littered with kneejerk reactions that the perpetrator very quickly regrets.

Dunky knows he’s let himself and the Albion down, he doesn’t need me, nor any members of the Albion moral majority, to tell him that – although social media has been awash with criticism.

But actually, the incident at the City ground throws up a superb opportunity for the game, not just at EPL level, but right down the remainder of the football pyramid.

Almost a drawing of a line in the sand, in fact.

Taylor is perceived to be currently the best referee in the country – for older readers, the Jack Taylor of his generation. So therefore if he sets the bar it goes without saying it would only be right for every other referee in the country, from stadium to park pitch, to follow his lead.

From next Saturday, from the EPL down, for every serious case of dissent directly at the ref, it’s a straight red.

A tad draconian? Not really – needs must. It’s fair to say that the red card figures for December would set all kinds of records, but how long, with teams losing at least one, maybe two players a week, and the subsequent suspensions, before dissent effectively disappears?

Clearly, we aren’t going to turn every footballer in this country into Nigel Havers, but a strong stance from EVERY referee will see a U-turn in attitudes that Starsky and Hutch or Margaret Thatcher would have been proud of.

Many felt, for all her many faults, Maggie truly had balls. Will the refs in this country, led by the aforementioned Mr Taylor, have the same?

Thankfully Dunky’s two-game suspension doesn’t start until after Albion’s landmark trip to Athens on Thursday, although the Albion still have a sick list resembling an episode of Casualty.

But it is what it is and given how far the Albion have come footballing wise, we all effectively embrace it as part of the rollercaoster ride.

With two games to go in their Europa League group, the Albion need only a solitary point to guarantee some kind of European knockout football in 2024, and I believe that point will come on Thursday night.