SHOW me a football fan who thinks their side have had a fair crack from referees and I’ll show you someone who hasn’t seen a game this season.

It is a rare old occasion anyone comes away from a match with words of praise for the officials, yet if a mistake is made, you can guarantee you will hear about it for days on end. Thankless doesn’t begin to cover it.

A refereeing error can provide an easy hook for us media types to build a story and some managers can be just as ready to hang their own team’s shortcomings on a bad decision.

At the top level, every referee gets a trial by television each weekend. Standards are still being questioned despite huge sums of money being invested in technology and training to improve them.

People who know much more than myself on the subject, and I include a mate of mine, Mark Halsey, in this category, suggest the infrastructure in which referees have to operate is at fault. Assessors, training, even the basic explanation of rules is all sub-standard, although the PGMOL, who have ultimate control over refereeing in this country, insist things have never been better.

At Wanderers, the days of complaining perpetually about Mark Clattenburg, Stuart Atwell or Lee Probert don’t seem that long ago. I remember even penning a character statement on behalf of Kevin Davies to send to the FA after some of his after-match comments had been picked up by the powers that be.

Perhaps moaning about a referee is just a rite of passage, something us football fans have to get out of their system once in a while before pointing the finger of blame towards someone else?

Since dropping into League One it seems to be a weekly occurrence. A bizarre call – for example Mark Davies’s booking for diving against Fleetwood – was shrugged off at the time. Wanderers had won the game, after all.

But when those decisions coincide with dropped points or defeats, as they did at Blackpool, Charlton, Southend or MK Dons, the whole thing takes a more sinister tone.

Referees at this level do not have the same financial backing, technological assistance or full-time training as their counterparts in the Premier League so it is difficult to hold them as accountable. Unfortunately for them, three points matter just as much down here, jobs are still on the line and judged on results.

Phil Parkinson saw fit to send a DVD of mistakes in to Football League boss David Allison, in his own words “to get it off my chest”.

Whether it does any good or not is debatable. On a personal level, the best thing Parkinson can hope to get out of it is justification, an admission that his side have been hard done by.

But on a wider scale, does bringing some attention to his own feelings of discrimination help to galvanise the Bolton fans into thinking the same?

Referees are often accused of home bias but we have seen no evidence of that at the Macron.

If Jamie Proctor, for example, is pole-axed in the penalty area against Bradford City in a week’s time, will the crowd produce an even more vociferous reaction and sway the man with the whistle? I’d certainly like to test out that theory.

Parkinson desperately does not want to come across to his supporters as ‘a complainer’ and chose to say very little on the subject of refereeing last weekend despite his furious expression betraying his silence.

It will be interesting to see if all this injustice brings out a more partisan reaction from the Wanderers supporters, who have been in high spirits this season.

Any edge Parkinson can muster next weekend when his former club come to town would be very much appreciated. Two proud and parochial football clubs, both well capable of going up this season; throw in the Lancashire v Yorkshire angle and you have yourself a proper game of football.