Abandoning a 'friendly' match due to the threat of violence. But who cares?

Game 8, 2023-24

It's only three months since a young man was killed on a football field just a couple of kilometres away from today's U19 friendly. The 15-year-old player took a punch to the back of the neck during a tournament at the end of last season, fell instantly into a coma, and died a few days later in hospital. The local football community expressed its collective shock and dismay, but for those of us refereeing on the morally rotten front line of the amateur game, the tragic outcome was the logical consequence of football's utter failure to address the issue of embedded verbal and physical violence.

Time to finally shelve The Shankly Quote

Did this mean that clubs have started the new season with a different attitude? A perhaps more reasoned, respectful approach to their opponents and officials, and one less influenced by foul tactics, dangerous tackles and instinctive confrontation? Did it fuck. And that's why I abandoned the game after 75 minutes following a mass confrontation on the pitch. I wasn't prepared to watch the threat of impending violence translate into another death.

If that sounds like an over-reaction, then I make no apologies. Better that we play short by a quarter hour than someone ends up in hospital or in the morgue. The problem is that we've come to accept anger, frustration, "emotions" and borderline psychotic behaviour as the norm. And when you view this serially malevolent conduct as the norm, you fail to take measures to prevent extreme outcomes. But you can't then act surprised when they happen.

Let's re-visit the game. The first 70 minutes have been largely peaceful, bar one brief display of dissent (dealt with by a short lecture), and one very minor tussle between two players (a second short lecture, and an enforced handshake). I'm enjoying it fine, because it's a beautiful Saturday evening and everything's under control. Yet, it only takes five minutes to turn really nasty. A couple of over-the-top fouls from the away team end in two five-minute time penalties, and suddenly the atmosphere is really pissy - the home team's outraged by the fouls, the away team by the sanctions. The second offender screams in my face about the injustice of him having to leave the field of play, prompting verbal disputes and little shoving duets to break out all over the field. My whistles are ignored, so I turn to the coaches - I want to bring them together to tell them they need to talk to their teams before we can finish the game.

But the away coach (a man in his late 50s) is in the midst of a very intense shouting match with the home team's number 7 (a teenage boy), and I can't bring him back down. "Did you hear that? He called me a whore!" the coach yells at me. Okay, this situation is hopeless. I blow the whistle three times and walk towards my changing room. Players continue to argue, but then they slowly stop. The game's over, after all. The friendly game, it's worth reiterating. Now it seems that everyone has realised there's nothing here worth getting worked up about after all. Who'd have thought?

In the changing room, I file my game report (with the promise of the disciplinary report to come - it ends up taking two and a half hours out of my Sunday morning after a sleepless night), then go to the club bar to receive my payment (€20) without a word in return. No one tries to stop me or even bother talking to me. Because this incident represents the norm, perhaps. We all got a little bit het up, the fussy ref blew up early, now let's all go and enjoy our Saturday night. When I unlock my bike, several home team players are standing next to me, already drinking. It's not that they ignore me, as such. They don't appear to be aware that I even exist. (Well, they say the best refs are the ones you don't notice.)

Our state FA has introduced a 'three-stage' model to de-escalate the threat of violence, but only when it applies to spectators shouting foul insults (interestingly, "Your refereeing's shit!" doesn't qualify, you have to be called a motherfucker or the son of a whore). First, stop the game for five minutes. At the second insult, for ten minutes. At the third insult, call the game off. But this is useless for situations like the above. As ever, the necessary sweeping initiatives to tackle an institutional problem - our entire fucked-up approach to football - are nowhere to be seen. Not even after a player has been killed.

I don't care about the personal consequences for my future as a referee. From now on, whenever I feel that there is the threat of violence on or off the field, and that there is no one besides myself there to prevent it, then I will blow three times and walk away. I know from experience that, without any help from the coaches, the last 15 minutes of this game would have seen an escalation of poor and potentially violent behaviour. Due to a failure of leadership at all levels of the game, that's already lead to one teenage boy being mourned by his family, while another sits in a prison cell on a charge of causing death by grievous bodily harm. If that's not enough to prompt radical change in the way we run the game, then exactly what is?

Final score: match abandoned after 75 minutes (2 x yellow, 2 x time-penalty)

My book 'Reffing Hell: Stuck in the Middle of a Game Gone Wrong' documents six years of whistling torment, tears and occasional ecstasy. Please buy a copy direct from Halcyon if you would like to support this blog and independent publishing.