Monday 20 December 2021

My tipping point, and a call for positive action to protect amateur referees

Game 33, 2021-22

For five and a half seasons this blog has been documenting abusive, insulting and disrespectful behaviour in and around the city where it referees amateur and youth football. At some point, though, merely describing what's going on - and it's not just in my games, it's universal - is insufficient. The time has conclusively come to take a stance. 

Myself and a small group of local referees are working on a list of demands and proposed actions to try and tackle the endemic problems in amateur football that have escalated to the point where every weekend brings some form of trouble, even in the quietest games. What can be done to curb the dissent, the tantrums, the threats and the all-round prevalence of unpleasant attitude and total lack of sporting enjoyment? One thing is clear - posters saying 'Respect!' and 'Thanks, ref!' are not doing the job, whatever their grandiose, committee-endorsed intentions.

After dozens of negative and hair-raising experiences, my personal tipping point came a week ago. A month back, I'd refereed a boys' U17 match which ended with a number of players on the losing team insulting me and screaming at me after the final whistle. I walked through the cacophony without reacting, but noted the numbers of the players and duly wrote up a disciplinary report that same Saturday evening when I would rather have been doing something more relaxing (they have to be submitted "within 24 hours" of the final whistle). As usual, I heard nothing back. The team in question didn't play for another three weeks. But when they did play, all three players that I'd named in the disciplinary report were in the starting line-up. There had been no punishments at all for 16-year-olds screaming indiscriminately at a referee, frustrated at their loss in a game they'd expected to win (with no intervention from their coach - a fellow referee, by the way).

So a week ago I fired off an email to my refereeing association, the league administrator and the state FA demanding to know why there had been no sanctions against the three players. What was the point in referees making the effort to urgently write up these reports (remember - "within 24 hours") if no one was acting upon them? Were they even being read? Due to this disgraceful inaction and ineptitude, I went on, I was withdrawing from all U17 and U19 games until further notice.

My refereeing boss followed up with a fully supportive e-mail pointing out to those concerned that "we're in danger of losing yet another referee for youth games".  Besides that, there has - predictably enough - been no acknowledgment or response at all. On Saturday I was supposed to take a boys' U19 game, but I pulled out. In exchange - you can view it as a punishment or a reward - I refereed a U11 game instead. 40 minutes shorter, but only €2 less pay, and no aggro whatsoever.

Of course I missed the challenge of a full-on, 90-minute game, and my body won't benefit from having run about one fifth of the distance that I would have covered on a full-sized pitch with almost fully developed teenagers rather than 10-year-olds. But I didn't miss that nagging pre-match fear about what could be waiting for me this time around. Which trifling decision might push a coach or a player over the edge? Which throw-in call will render a grown man ballistic? Will I make it back to my bicycle without being told I'm the shittiest ref in the history of the game?

Our nascent manifesto will outline what we think needs to be done to shift the current football culture in our city. Although the last thing I feel like doing right now is refereeing, I'm still not yet willing to give up, no matter how tempting the prospect of stress-free weekends for the rest of my life. We will be positive and constructive, but firm in tone, demanding justice, transparency and a concrete support network. We will summarise what needs to be done at all levels of the game to support football's sporting values from the bottom up. If we don't raise our collective voices now, the clubs will not pay any attention until, one day, they're forced to referee all their games with a parent plucked from the touchline, or a passer-by out walking their dog. Or even the dog itself ("Bloody hell, Rex, what's the matter - you fucking colour blind or something?") 

I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, it's the winter break here, with no more games until 'friendlies' resume in mid-January. There's been a huge upsurge in visitors to this blog in recent months, and I want to thank you all for taking the time to read about my officiating woes and occasional moments of levity. I wish you all a Happy Pagan Winter Festival of Light, and hope you can take on 2022 with your heads up and your whistles sounding loud and proud.

Final score: 2-8 (no cards) 

Click here to order Reffing Hell: Stuck In The Middle Of A Game Gone Wrong by Ian Plenderleith (Halcyon Publishing), published on August 8, 2022.  


7 comments:

  1. I feel your pain. Had enough myself even some of the U11 games are terrible. I feel like there is a huge payout for a win in the game that I don't know about. I like the "Oh come on, this is just a tournament." Like there are no yellow cards in a tournament. Stay strong!

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  2. Thanks, Joe. Had a call from my reffing boss last night, on his way back from a disciplinary hearing. The disciplinary panel had not been forwarded my report by the league admin... Supposedly it will come to a hearing now in January. The good news is that the hearing he'd attended was for a youth team coach who'd followed a referee to the car park and threatened him. He was banned from the game for three years - a very encouraging sign.

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  3. Hmmm ... Just like you, I've had a lot of good matches with minimal dissent and abusive language/behavior. Probably about 80-90% decent to good over the 150 or so this past fall. However, there were some doozies.

    - Some of my ugliest experiences have been U-9 to U-11 matches. Absolutely nothing to do with the kids, occasionally with coaches, but mainly the insane parents. At that point, too many think their perfect little baby is on path to be the next Maradona and Olympic star. They are incredibly invested emotionally and, often, haven't yet had their hands slapped for inappropriate actions. Several weeks ago, for a U12F match, there was a father who walking close to the line up and down the field yelling instructions at his daughter and disputing calls. He was also catching balls as they went out of bounds and holding on to them for the time he could yell some (idiot) instructions to his daughter. After multiple warnings, I kicked him off the field and was treated to his screaming (so that everyone, including the 35 or so 11 year old girls) "you must be getting a real hard on from your power trip ... are you jerking off in front of my daughter" etc ... etc ... I had thought he left the area of the field but discovered he hadn't as I cautioned a girl for a flying leap toward the goalie with her hip colliding with the goalie's face. (A few years later, a clear ejection ...) From that loving father, "You F--KING BASTARD, the goalie didn't have the ball ... you can't give her a yellow card ... you need to F--KING learn the rules you piece of s--t." Pleasant ...

    - In a U17B match, the players and one team's adults were pretty reasonable. I was AR2 in front of the exception group of parents. The referee had to, multiple times, pause the match to address parent screaming dissent & referee abuse. It reached the point where he loudly (so the dozen or so problem parents, the team manager, and lots of the players could hear) instructed me for zero tolerance and to flag dissent/etc. Lots of fun material like being told "we're spectators who can say whatever the f--k we wish and you need to put up with it ... that's what we're paying you for ... just grow a pair of balls and live with it."
    Eventually, through a series of worsening situations, three men were ejected in separate events. With the third, he spent several minutes in a screaming, spitting rant with lines like "you're a baby whose diaper must be full of shit", "you must have a really sucky life and you should go back to being shitty in it", and numerous other personal attacks and insults with foul and abusive language.In response to the formal report, the assignor's reaction: "well, I know of a lot worse cases'. Well, so do I, but that doesn't excuse it nor does it mean that this should be tolerated in any way. Several weeks later, silence as to whether the team or even these three men have received any form of sanction.

    As to manifesto, I'd like to see:

    - Feedback to referees for any/all formal reports submitted (if action taken, what happened; if not, why not).
    - Sanctions that might lead to learning: For example, in the case above, what if that parent had to write a letter that was sent to every single one of the 12 girls (on both teams), the coaches, and the refereeing crew apologizing for his behavior and language if he ever wanted to be allowed on a sideline again watching his daughter play?
    - Financial implication: Many of the leagues and situations have a lot of money involved. Some of these situations merit fines. Perhaps the money could go to referee associations and for higher referee compensation for matches.

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  4. Many thanks for those alarming accounts, AS. I love your idea of miscreants having to write individual letters of apology to the kids - going to suggest something similar here. Our referees' association today published the full and damning disciplinary verdict on the coach banned for three years, and has professed it will continue to publish such verdicts in the name of transparency. Previously, these reports have been kept under wraps. So it looks like there's an overall momentum, at last, to push for change.

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  5. Here's the manifesto my league came up with this year: https://ayso13.org/respect-the-referee (it took some doing to make it positive, instructional, and encouraging).

    The policy also has teeth: parents attend a preseason orientation. Game reports are reviewed promptly. There are independent reporting paths for parents, coaches, and refs. League officials are willing to sanction parents and coaches. If it worked, we'll find out in a few months if the referees return for another season.

    Also, for unrelated reasons, the league report standings. The parents were sooo chill toward the coaches, as they didn't know they were at the bottom of the pool.

    With AYSO, refs and coaches cooperatively run the league. For you, how do the referees communicate to the league management? Does it all go through the assigner? Do you get paid for filing reports? Maybe teams should pay extra for every spectator ejected.

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  6. Ian Plenderleith12 January 2022 at 09:29

    Hi Shanti, many thanks for the link - good work, and yes, following through is really important. Our sports grounds have signs about Respect etc. everywhere from previous campaigns, and no one pays them the slightest bit of notice. Signs are no good, there has to be follow-up. Our disciplinary reports are attached to our online game reports, and then the league administrator is supposed to pass them on to the disciplinary panel. In this case, that didn't initially happen. This is why we're demanding a simple acknowledgment from the league administrators that our reports have been received and forwarded. We don't get paid extra for filing reports, even though they can take 1-2 hours to write in the worst cases. I don't think that would be a good idea, as some refs might be motivated to show red cards for the extra income... Manifesto update - five of us have been working on it over the holiday period and are now fine-tuning it for perusal by our refereeing association.

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  7. Hi Ian,

    I hope you are well. I’m Pablo Argüelles, a reporter working for Rough Translation, an NPR podcast hosted by Gregory Warner. The podcast tells long-form, character-driven stories that explore themes, ideas and experiences from all over the world.

    I'm doing some preliminary research for a story about referees around the world, and especially about the abuse they suffer in and out the pitch. I found your blog and I’d be very interested in talking to you to hear about your experience.

    Would you happen to have some time next week for a call?

    Please let me know if you have any questions. You can reach me at parguellescattori@npr.org.

    Sincerely,
    Pablo Argüelles Cattori

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