Bizarre ref in the PAOK game

An utterly bizarre thing happened yesterday evening in the match between PAOK and Levadiakos.

The first bizarre thing, of course, is to wonder why I was watching it. Well, as ever I was down in town trying to watch English football on a Saturday. I did OK for the Arsenal-Tottenham match, but come the 3pm kick-offs UK time I was heavily out-numbered by locals wanting to watch PAOK. Damn these Greeks and their ridiculous constant desire to watch their own football in their own country ;-)

In between the PAOK game I got a bit of Liverpool-Portsmouth and the end of Aston Villa-Man City, so all was not lost.

Anyway, PAOK were winning 1-0, and the game had 3 minutes of injury time to play. In the 93rd minute, the referee went off injured. He made a big exhibition of leaving the field, hi-fived the fourth official who was taking over, applauded the fans like a player being substituted, and did a little Hercules Poirot-style bow.

The fourth official came on, blew the whistle to re-start play as PAOK took a throw-in, and then, literally, two seconds later, blew the final whistle! How very, very, very odd.