Mike Jones. Premier League Referee. 202 Games Between 2008-09-2017-18 , Can Anyone Confirm

[rebelboy]

if this is the same Mike Jones who refereed one game in 1994-95? I'm pretty much convinced that this game saw the original ref go off injured and the senior linesman(Mike Jones) taking his place but I have no idea if it's the same Mike Jones.

Many thanks in advance.

[Buenchico]

There's no reference to a 1994/95 appearance by (the current) Mike Jones on the Premier League's own website. They state that "Jones was in the middle for a Premier League match for the first time when Hull took on Wigan Athletic in August 2008":
https://www.premierleague.com/referees/16922/Mike-Jones/overview

Every match he's ever refereed in (at the upper levels of football) should be listed here:
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/mike-jones/profil/schiedsrichter/628

[rebelboy]

Many thanks my friend. Just checked via your link on the PL website and interestingly in the Personal Details on the extreme right it states first Premier League appearance on 27th August 1994 Norwich City v West Ham. No further details but this might mean he ran the line and was called on as the replacement ref.

[Buenchico]

Now things are getting confusing!

Sticking with the Premier League's own website, Mike Jones is shown as the designated referee for that game:
https://www.premierleague.com/match/951

[rebelboy]

My word isn't it just. Blows my theory out of the water. I wonder if it is a different Mike Jones. I'm trying to find out the ref for every PL game since its inception and I was hitting a brick wall and I didn't know you could access this sort of information you sent in the link. And to be honest I still don't as I'm very much a technophobe. Can you advise me please as how to get to these pages. Many thanks, Paul

[Buenchico]

I simply googled 'Mike Jones referee', and looked through the links offered, to get to my first link above. My second link was right next to it in the Google search results.

To get the third link I just copied-and-pasted '27th August 1994 Norwich City v West Ham' into Google's search field and looked through the results.

[rebelboy]

Buenchico I've managed to find how to access the different seasons and match details but without your link I'd be still well in the dark. You've been a Godsend. Much obliged to you.

The Mike Jones conundrum is still a mystery though.

[rebelboy]

WorldFootball.Net gives the ref in the Norwich v West Ham game as PETER Jones! Who according to the PL site started his career in 1995/96 season with 18 games. This seems to be more likely.

Even more confusing is that according to the PL site in 1997-98 Peter Jones reffed 22 games and Mike Jones 2 games. WorldFootball doesn't list any games for Mike Jones in 97-98.
There is contrasting info on both sites and I don't think any of them are 100% accurate.

[Buenchico]

It's easy to get confused about anyone called Peter Jones. HM the Queen famously began a speech at Eton College with the words "I want to thank the headmaster of Eton College, Peter Jones . . . ". There was just one small problem with that: the headmaster's name was actually John Lewis ;-)

To return to the subject though:
Assuming that Wikipedia had got Mike Jones' date of birth corect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Jones_(referee)
he would have been just 26 years old in August 1994. As Mark Clattenberg was the youngest person ever to referee in the Premier League when he first did so, at the age of 29, in 2004, that simply doesn't seem to fit with the facts. (25-year-old Stuart Attwell took the 'youngest' title from him in 2008, losing it to Michael Oliver, also 25 years of age, in 2010).

So it seems likely that the reference to Michael Jones refereeing the 1994 Norwich v West Ham match on the Premier League website is an error (particularly as it conflicts with the rest of the information on the same site).

[Gromit]

This is great. How AB should work.
Deduction, reasoning, research and Common sense.
Well done guys.

[rebelboy]

Thank you Gromit. It's been a bit of a challenge but I can now confirm that in the 1997-98 season the two games listed as being reffed by Mike Jones were in fact reffed by Peter Jones. A season lasts for 380 games and if you tally up the games listing both the Jones's it comes to 382 so I'm taking it that , as Buenchico states, Mike Jones didn't ref in the PL until 2008 as initially stated by the PL website.
Unless anyone knows different!!

[angie55]

According to Rothmans Football Yearbook in 1997-98, the Premier League referees for the 1997-98 season included P Jones of Loughborough and MJ (Michael) Jones of Chester (with a note to say it was his promotion to the Premier League for the first time). In the 98-99 Rothmans, P Jones is still shown as a Premier League referee, but MJ Jones is still a Football League referee but no longer a Premier League referee.

[rebelboy]

Hells Bells, Angie! Cat among the Pigeons again. It's only the PL website that lists Mike Jones as refereeing two games in 97-98. I've checked several other football statistical sites and they all say Peter Jones. The two games he refereed according to the PL were on Monday 23rd February 1998 between Liverpool and Everton. I cannot see a referee being given his first game in a Merseyside derby. The second game was Arsenal v Wimbledon on Saturday 18th April 1998.

Another anomaly I've just found is that in the 1993-94 season the PL gives John Lloyd as refereeing 9 matches but the excellent 11v11 website gives him only 3 games with the other 6 being refereed by a T. Lloyd!
Thanks for your help and contribution, Angie, even if it has muddied the waters!