FORMER Premier League referee Mark Halsey believes he has been frozen out of football by the game’s establishment.

The 53-year-old Bolton-based ref kicks off his column on The Bolton News sports pages tomorrow.

Mr Halsey retired as a FIFA-listed and Premier League referee at the end of the 2012-13 season and soon after was recruited as a refereeing pundit by BT Sport.

But the Hertfordshire-born official reckons he ruffled too many feathers while making what he says were “honest assessments” of refereeing performances, as well as in his 2013 book Added Time.

He said: “I find it criminal that someone like myself with my vast experience and knowledge of the game is not being utilised even at local level by organisations like the Lancashire County FA or the leagues around Manchester.

“I still have an enormous passion for the game. It’s never been about money for me.”

Mr Halsey — a former columnist in The Sun — is currently working as an analyst for the website urtheref.com and says he is getting very positive feedback from readers.

He also appears regularly on Spectrum Radio and Talk Sport.

He said: “The thing is you’ve got to be honest.

“When I was writing for The Sun I had one or two referees calling me to complain about what I was saying.

“But I would tell them that I was only being honest, but that didn’t go down too well in certain quarters.

“When I was a referee myself I would often get criticism and if I made errors, I was the first to hold my hand up and admit it.”

Mr Halsey says he is now enjoying life on the after-dinner speaking circuit and watching League Two high-flyers Bury, managed by Boltonian David Flitcroft.

He added: “David and Chris Brass are doing a fantastic job at Gigg Lane, also known as the JD Stadium.”

Mr Halsey battled cancer in 2009 after he announced he had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and underwent surgery to remove a tumour from his throat.

This was at the same time his wife, Michelle, was diagnosed with leukaemia.

He battled back to fitness and returned to refereeing in March 2010.