As the days lengthen and football leagues up and down the country reach their climax, it's perhaps a good time to start thinking about the success - or lack of it - of the FA's Respect campaign, which is aimed at restoring an element of civility to football and to arresting the downward slide into thuggishness that has spoiled the game for so long.
From personal experience of the matches I ref and of professional matches I watch on television, I'm afraid the verdict is pretty damning and is perhaps best symbolised by the behaviour of Ashley Cole when he was out enjoying life in London at 2am. Dissatisfied that police were not doing enough to ward off photographers (legally) snapping him leaving a club, he unleashed a torrent of foul language against the police officers sent to calm the situation down. They arrested him, which referees, unfortunately, cannot do.
On the amateur playing fields of Kent, the vast majority of the yellow cards I dish out are for dissent. In the last month or so, levels of dissent have grown to the worst I've known them, a constant stream of shouting, swearing, complaining, confronting and whinging.
Last week, a coach running the line (very well) told me at half time that someone in the very small crowd (half a dozen people) behind him had called him a "a cheating c***". Charming. I looked at the group of middle aged, apparently harmless blokes and shook my head.
During the match, one player was about to go in the book for swearing in my general direction (Yes, shock horror, we book players usually for swearing and don't send them off) when his teammate joined in and started complaining. Told to go away, he declined and I informed him to hang around as he was going in the book as well. "Don't worry lads, I'll be awarding the ref's points this week," I heard him shout loudly.
So that's how much respect I'm getting.
Fortunately, I'm reffing at one stage up from park football now, so the behaviour of coaches and team officials is much better. A cup of tea at full-time, prompt payment and helpful officials are pretty common, but once that whistle goes, the players still think they're a law unto themselves.
I generally tend to be a lenient ref and try to talk players out of cards, but that's not working. I'm afraid the only thing that does work is when the cards come out. Eventually, the message gets through that they're just going to get themselves into trouble.
So Respect? Means nothing to me at ther moment.
2 comments:
Don't the LOTG state that players using offensive, insulting or abusive language should be sent from the field of play? pehaps if the law was followed to the letter your name as a referee would get about and the clubs would think eh up we don't wanna mess about with that Haydon bloke cos he will send us off if we swear.... as always your reputation preceeds you, of course teams look at the appointments even to the stage where they know which refs thay can 'get at' on a fixture...
Good point anonymous and one i can't defend other than to say it's common practice for most swearing to be treated as dissent, as I'm sure you know, and the red is reserved for the worst excesses.
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