A book I have read recently, ‘Referees, Match Officials and Abuse’ is by Tom Webb and his crew down at Portsmouth University, who have been carrying out their research for over 15 years.
As it suggests, it covers abuse of match officials, not just football in the UK but other sports scanning many other countries.
However, their findings for English football are not good reading. Out of the referees questioned, 93.7% said they had been abused and 18.9% had suffered physical assault.
Football abuse is not confined to the UK. In America youth football, or soccer as they call it, is very big and 70% of the referees are teenagers.
Mike Woitally writing recently in Youth-Soccer-Inside, an American magazine, recalled a match where the coach screamed so much at the teenage girl referee that she burst into tears and the match had
to be abandoned.
This was illustrating his view that ending referee abuse starts with the coaches.
There is a great deal to be said for this. When refereeing youth matches I have often had to tackle coaches about their loud criticisms from the touchline.
I explain that if they are allowed to continue, young players will think that it is perfectly acceptable behaviour and start to make similar comments when decisions don’t go their way.
This may lead to them receiving yellow or perhaps red cards.
Even in professional football, coaches set an example. That’s why red and yellow cards were introduced for coaches.
Take the Reading v Bristol City match. One of the Reading coaches received a yellow card for his behaviour when a decision in the opponents’ penalty area, didn’t go Reading’s way.
Despite the fact that the referee had a much better view being within 10 yards of the incident, while the coach was at least 60 yards away, he ran onto the pitch, waving his arms about and screaming like a banshee.
Even after receiving a yellow card he carried on waving his arms about to incite the supporters to show their displeasure.
Why should any player hold back from abuse of referees, with an example like that?
