[Football] Grassroots Refs Abused and Spat at.

[chaileyjem]

There’s a new survey/investigation into the abuse of refs by BBC Sport and 5 Live today. Pretty shocking stuff. Volunteers spat at, abused, attacked , head butted, punched - all for £25 or often for free.
Last night in Liverpool/ Everton - Klopp and Dyche screaming in face of fourth official, Robertson and Henderson swearing at ref.

'One day in this country a referee will lose his or her life'

Hundreds of grassroots referees tell the BBC they fear for their safety when refereeing and are dissatisfied with the current measures to tackle abuse.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[chaileyjem]

There’s a phone in for the next hour on 5 Live tackling this.

 

[drew]

Give them bodycams then come down hard on any team that abuse them. Ban any player or official from all football for 3 months for first offence, a year for second and for life for the third. Thats all football so they couldn't go to the Albion nor watch their kids play etc etc.

And get refs at the top of the game to enforce the laws properly.

 

[Bold Seagull]

If you watch a lot of kids football, so much from the top of the game is emulated by the kids. Diving, goal celebrations, reactions to decisions - what happens in the PL is repeated by kids every weekend as they come up through football and they take that into the adult game.

Start at the top with a zero tolerance of abuse of officials, none of this 'showing a lot of passion', and work your way down. While it is acceptable for 'professionals' to have no professional standards, then you can hardly expect amateurs to behave any better. The top of the game should be excellence in every respect, and that includes respecting officials.

 

[SAC]

The rules/laws are already there, they just need to be enforced. Although some clubs are worse than others, players from all clubs do it and it's wrong.

I would state that the ref lets both teams know that he wont stand for any abuse and that cards will be shown. If that doesn't work then we will need to go down the rugby route of only the captains speaking to the ref.

It would help if the officials were a bit better (and consistent) though, it must be very frustrating being kicked at all match and not getting any protection from the ref.

 

[Springal]

The rules/laws are already there, they just need to be enforced. Although some clubs are worse than others, players from all clubs do it and it's wrong.

I would state that the ref lets both teams know that he wont stand for any abuse and that cards will be shown. If that doesn't work then we will need to go down the rugby route of only the captains speaking to the ref.

It would help if the officials were a bit better (and consistent) though, it must be very frustrating being kicked at all match and not getting any protection from the ref.

actually Howard Webb has started this already. Players booked for surrounding the ref, and actually was a yellow that got the Wolves player sent off on Saturday

 

[Farehamseagull]

If you watch a lot of kids football, so much from the top of the game is emulated by the kids. Diving, goal celebrations, reactions to decisions - what happens in the PL is repeated by kids every weekend as they come up through football and they take that into the adult game.

Start at the top with a zero tolerance of abuse of officials, none of this 'showing a lot of passion', and work your way down. While it is acceptable for 'professionals' to have no professional standards, then you can hardly expect amateurs to behave any better. The top of the game should be excellence in every respect, and that includes respecting officials.

And it all starts with the parents. I love working in kids football but by a long way, the absolute worst thing about it is the parents. The kids are a joy, easy, and the absolute vast majority of them behave superbly. The parents though are a disgrace a lot of the the time and over the years, their behaviour will rub off on the kids.

 

[Gwylan]

I'm both a rugby coach and a ref and there's a completely different approach. Kids are told, when they're 6 and 7, just starting out that officials' decisions should be accepted. Any arguing: the ball gets moved forwards (5m in mini rugby, 10m in junior and adult). Any persistent arguing and the kid gets sent to the sidelines for a few minutes to cool off - and it's torture for a 7-year-old to stand at the sidelines and watch his mates playing.

I'd love to think that could work in football but, as others have pointed out, when they watch TV and see players arguing the toss and managers raging in officials' faces, it's going to be hard to resist doing the same. The authorities really need to make an example of some coaches and managers - maybe a season-long touchline ban - to get the message across.

 

[jonny.rainbow]

The sin bin works well for dissent at grass roots level.

Keeper got sin binned for the other team in a match I played in this season for abusing the ref following a penalty decision.

His team mates were pissed off with him as they had to play 10 minutes with 10 players and an outfield player in goal.

 

[Bold Seagull]

The rules/laws are already there, they just need to be enforced. Although some clubs are worse than others, players from all clubs do it and it's wrong.

I would state that the ref lets both teams know that he wont stand for any abuse and that cards will be shown. If that doesn't work then we will need to go down the rugby route of only the captains speaking to the ref.

It would help if the officials were a bit better (and consistent) though, it must be very frustrating being kicked at all match and not getting any protection from the ref.

I think the rules/laws as they stand don't give the officials enough to work with. A yellow card then a red as the only means of enforcing the laws of the game is restrictive as a yellow doesn't really impact a player or the game as such, whereas a red is then a massively leap and completely changes a game. A yellow is fairly easy to issue, whereas a red is a significant consequence.

Given we have squads, 5 subs, I'd like to think there is room for different levels of punishment. i.e. a player could be subject to an enforced substitution for something like decent where the team doesn't go down to 10 men, but that player has to go off, or a sin bin type scenario. Kind of feel officials are limited with just bookings and sendings off.

 

[Wardy's twin]

actually Howard Webb has started this already. Players booked for surrounding the ref, and actually was a yellow that got the Wolves player sent off on Saturday

But that just shows the problem - the guy who got booked was not really surrounding the ref and apparently not abusive yet others get away with a lot worse all the time. Simple things like slowly walking off the pitch at the longest exit all disrespecting the ref.

 

[Monkey Man]

Agree with sentiments in posts above. Every time I hear about grassroots refs being abused I think about the way people like Klopp behave and the impact it has.

One thing I always find odd is the way that, when they're suddenly surrounded by furious players, refs start walking backwards, which then seems to encourage more players to pile in. Everything about that looks wrong.

How about standing your ground, and if that means a player bumps into you, they get a card?

 

[jcdenton08]

But that just shows the problem - the guy who got booked was not really surrounding the ref and apparently not abusive yet others get away with a lot worse all the time. Simple things like slowly walking off the pitch at the longest exit all disrespecting the ref.

Robertson last night a prime example. Fernandes every single game, every single decision

 

[Springal]

But that just shows the problem - the guy who got booked was not really surrounding the ref and apparently not abusive yet others get away with a lot worse all the time. Simple things like slowly walking off the pitch at the longest exit all disrespecting the ref.

It’s the third player. One of the cards at the weekend, the opposing player ran from his own box into the opposition half to talk to the referee. Deserved yellow

 

[Commander]

Agree with sentiments in posts above. Every time I hear about grassroots refs being abused I think about the way people like Klopp behave and the impact it has.

One thing I always find odd is the way that, when they're suddenly surrounded by furious players, refs start walking backwards, which then seems to encourage more players to pile in. Everything about that looks wrong.

How about standing your ground, and if that means a player bumps into you, they get a card?

I've often thought that. In Pierluigi Collina's autobiography he talks about this often repeated point of view that the best referees are the ones you don't notice. He says that it complete bollocks, it should be the other way around. The referee should be the main man on the pitch. He should be at the centre of everything and he should command respect, even fear. I think he's right.

It would literally take about three weeks at the start of a season to solve all these problems. A zero tolerance approach to arguing / surrounding the referees / time-wasting, everything. Yellow card for first offence, red card for second. A few games of 8 v 9 and people like Klopp would stop their team doing it, they'd have no other choice.

 

[Weststander]

Rooney at every club literally every match used to tell refs to F@ck Off, did he ever get a red card? . Radio 5 earlier covered the incident where Stam, Neville, Giggs bullied a ref. It wasn't impulsive, it was one of Taggart's incremental gains tactics in games (Dave Brailsford/Matthew Syed ... but without grey matter).

The genie was let out of the bottle in the 1990's, the authorities did very little.

 

[Wardy's twin]

It’s the third player. One of the cards at the weekend, the opposing player ran from his own box into the opposition half to talk to the referee. Deserved yellow

Don't disagree but you see much more going on and it goes unpunished.

 

[Justice]

Agree with sentiments in posts above. Every time I hear about grassroots refs being abused I think about the way people like Klopp behave and the impact it has.

One thing I always find odd is the way that, when they're suddenly surrounded by furious players, refs start walking backwards, which then seems to encourage more players to pile in. Everything about that looks wrong.

How about standing your ground, and if that means a player bumps into you, they get a card?

If you watch any European football this rarely happens the ref flashes yellows to all complainers in that situation.

 

[Springal]

Don't disagree but you see much more going on and it goes unpunished.

It looks like they only started clamping down on it this weekend !

 

[Farehamseagull]

Whilst this is well and good us having this well meaning debate on this thread, there's a couple of other threads on here where we're massively laying into officials for a human mistake they made on Saturday. As every week referee's are abused by our fans and fans of all other teams in the ground. To be honest I feel a lot of the time, the players are playing up to the crowd and feeding off them and I think it's hypocritical for fans to criticize players for doing it when the reactions from the stands are much worse every week. That's what the kids are also learning from.

Until we as supporters can stop aggressively abusing referee's, are the players ever going to stop?