The last time Carlisle United were at this end of League Two they also had their issues with referees. You may remember the home encounter with AFC Wimbledon in September 2014 when, as is their way, the Blues turned a 4-2 lead into a 4-4 draw.

That game spun partly on a red card shown to Gary Dicker for handball. It cost Carlisle a penalty, gave Wimbledon a third goal and spoiled United’s chance of a first win of the league season which had already seen the sacking of Graham Kavanagh.

The sending-off was appealed and, when it was rejected, there was quite some grandstanding from the club hierarchy. There was a point in a long website statement from co-owner and then-managing director John Nixon when fair grievance grew into something bigger.

“Incidents like these,” Nixon wrote, “tend to indicate that the standard of officials at the lower levels is going to make things very difficult for teams. We have made the players aware of that and suggested they need to have it in mind whenever they go onto the pitch.”

There was more of this: talk of “rough justice”, “strange decisions” in other games, and a pay-off where Nixon suggested he would use his Football Association connections to bat for the disadvantaged Blues. “It shouldn’t ever be that the small, unfashionable clubs find justice hard to come by,” he concluded.

What became of those representations was not, as far as I can tell, greatly documented. United had at that point just come down from an eight-year stint in League One and had that summer anticipated a challenge for promotion. Carlisle may not have been everyone’s idea of fashionable but the fourth tier was not exactly teeming with such outfits either. The idea they were somehow less equal than others when it came to officiating was questionable.

It is not that United’s argument on Dicker was totally without merit. It was the time and space given to the sense of broader injustice. If the reader was invited to think anything in particular it would have been: ‘What chance have we got, when the system is so stacked against us?’

It was, all told, a lot of energy spent on a mild hindrance at a time Carlisle were, to be frank, fairly rubbish. The Wimbledon draw left them 22nd in the table with three points from six games and any time that is the outlook there is only so much noise that can be justified about one particular gripe.

United’s problems in the autumn of 2014 were several, refereeing a marginal one at best, and considering the regular references made to the subject again this season it is probably time to say once more that we’ve heard enough on the topic.

“It seems we are always talking about referees these days,” wrote Andrew Jenkins in his September 28 programme column, but the Carlisle chairman had not tired of the issue by last weekend. Another four of his 10 paragraphs were devoted to officials, a familiar tune back on its loop.

The most recent objection was about an extra minute of added time at Newport (during which the home team scored a winner) and a lack of “consistency” from refs. Previously Jenkins had aired incidents from another defeat, at Bradford, while United had also left Rochdale in August with steam jetting from their ears about one particular decision.

Again: these incidents, in isolation, were perfectly worthy of dispute. Jenkins and manager Steven Pressley certainly had a point at Valley Parade when they noted how Jack Bridge had been booked twice for offences which, when repeated by home players, had brought no such punishment.

There was, too, a case for a second penalty at Rochdale – Pressley was so incensed that he took his displeasure about the standard of lower-league officials to the refereeing authorities – while the matter of Antony Coggins’ timekeeping in south Wales could no doubt be picked over depending on your take on one or two late incidents.

The sense is still, though, that the theme is getting more airplay than it should be, considering Carlisle are fifth-bottom of the EFL for greater reasons than officials being somehow skewed in their incompetence. Yes, they can be better; yes, we have seen some turkeys with whistles this season; and no, they should not be above criticism; but one day – just one – I would like to see someone in Professional Game Match Officials Limited break rank and redress the balance with a statement of their own.

It might begin: “It seems we are always talking about the standard of League Two football these days…” before going on to list the various flaws which can reduce the level of an average Saturday spectacle.

There will be sighs over misplaced passes, dubious tactics and dodgy defending, why-oh-whys about managers, and cries that Something Must Be Done about the epidemic of players appealing for everything from throw-ins upwards which they know fine well belong to the other team.

If there is a consistency problem with Carlisle just now their results obviously suggest it lies in places other than referees; when supporters were airing their feelings last Saturday – some of them leaning over to the press box to do so – nobody seemed to be saying that it would be so much better if only we could rely more on the men and women with the whistles and flags.

David Holdsworth, the director of football, spoke at length on more serious topics this week and whatever supporters made of his remarks it is surely better to dwell on and explore those things than read another poor-us diatribe about incidental obstacles.

“What I will say is that if you give any opinions they are very protective and seek to close ranks,” Jenkins also wrote. On that, too, refs are anything but a lone football breed.