Who is John Jones?

But the rest of you will be asking: Who is John Jones?

Well, he is the appointments secretary and administrator for all referees outside of the Football League.

And he was telling me recently that since the beginning of this season the best refs were to being sent to the games involving teams at the top of each league.

But there must be some mistake because we have had some awful refs at Stanley this season (I could use a better word but not in a family newspaper).

John used to be on the UniBond League committee with me but the first time I met him was at Harrogate a good few years back when I was manager of Great Harwood.

He sent one of my sons, Paul, off and I wasn't so well at the time so I was sat in the stands.

I can't repeat what I said to him after the game but I told him what I thought of him. He wanted to know who I was but nobody would tell him.

We have become good friends since but I still think it is a load of rubbish that the FA and most of the leagues are run by ex-refs. Even the UniBond is run by them!

Bill Holden was a bit upset last week after reading my column.

I can assure everyone we are the best of friends and he says I can borrow his toupee at the weekends.

Things are looking quite good for Accrington Stanley now, 11 points clear.

We have won five in a row so things are looking quite good although we don't want to count our chickens.

At least people have stopped saying we can't win away from home after our last two away wins.

Hopefully that label has gone for good.

When I was manager of Clitheroe we had a great home record.

We lost one in three years and were promoted each season. But our away form was a different matter. Playing away is always a bit more difficult. You can blame poor pitches, poor conditions, poor refs but no one really knows why teams play so differently away from home and that is why football is such a great game.

I would like to thank our spectators for their support during our run of away games without a win. At Burscough and Runcorn, there were more Stanley fans than home fans and that was great to see.

I am a great believer that if you pay your money you can say what you want within reason and our supporters are both very patient and biased!

But our support has been tremendous and the players certainly appreciate it.

We are looking forward to our next away game a little more now than we were when that bad run was on.

Only 14 games left!