The bloke who punches him deserves to go to prison. The bloke in the brown coat who kicks the referee in the head while he's motionless on the ground deserves to go to prison for a lot longer, absolute cowardice.
I think he's realised that everyones seen through the rest of the words, and he's decided to take an unpaid vacation from the post.
Heavily punished I agree. But if a director from our club punched the ref. Would you say the same. He should never hold office again and banned throughout football. With a fully written statement from the club admonishing him, and any others who took part in the assault. With a few games behind closed doors. To warn everyone else. Appears that's what they are doing in greece. But if it works. is really anyone's guess.
The abuse that refs get throughout the pyramid is disgusting. How are the FA going to convince more people to become officials if there is no protection. Go to any Sunday league game and you’ll hear terrible abuse hurled at them. I used to ref when I was 14-17 and could give loads of examples where I was threatened by parents and managers over decisions made in a U13 game. One fella ripped the corner flag out of the ground and said that he would be waiting for me in the car park after the game, I was 14 at the time. No protection from the mangers or any parent watching. To credit the club I moved to reffing the academy games at Barnsley and they took a zero tolerance approach to any abuse and would evict anyone that abused an official.
Stephen and others raise valid points that there needs to be accountability for referees because at the moment it here is none either for the referees or more importantly for organisations like the pgmol who operate them. Butttttttt that does not justify physical violence in any way shape or form, it's not even a discussion that should take place alongside it at all. A referee making an error doesn't excuse him being assaulted. It just doesn't. The attacker hasn't attacked him because of a bad decision he's attacked him because he's a thug. A racist doesn't shout racist abuse because the victim was mean to him, it's because he's a racist. A rapist doesn't rape a woman because of what she wears, it's because he's a rapist. Yes refs need to be better but that is a completely separate discussion. A thug is simply a thug looking for an excuse to be a thug
It makes me think of the Willard-Liverpool game at Oakwell, in the Prem season '97. Some of our fans ran onto the pitch of course, and I dread to think what would have happened if they had got their hands on the ref. Jan Fjortoft did ace when he grabbed one of them and wrestled him to the ground!.
I officiated at a decent level when I was younger and were always told if a team are trying to hold it in a corner to waste time ( legally ) we were told to always give a free kick or throw in to the opposition to avoid problems haha Not right I know but I’m sure you will have noticed they always seem to give goal kicks in this instance or free kicks to get out of the situation
If players got fined their match fee it might alter their attitudes. Brian Clough forbade his players remonstrating with refs. It isn't going to get you anywhere. And probably makes a ref more belligerent.
Exactly. I think we need to divorce the obvious here - assaulting, harassing, berating, intimidating, threatening referees is wrong in all circumstances no matter how bad the call, how passionate the game, how important the match, how much money on the line. I do think though that we can demand more consistency of refs - the way is making them of more equal standing on the pitch and their performance more transparent for the public. You can't have a ref on a civil engineer's salary out there bossing the pitch with 22 guys whose individual weekly wage may be two or three or four times what the ref makes in a year. In a game with multi-billionaire owners where awarding an unjustified three points can mean relegation, missing out on Europe, or millions in losses. Pay them the average weekly salary of players in that league, with bonuses per match refereed, and a scale of financial penalties for mistakes. Codify potential poor calls like they are infractions, all infractions during a game should be logged, publicly available even (by ref, by match, by club), with training occurring for that infraction. Score referees against a performance matrix each game and again at the end of the year. Look at the year's worth of infractions and see which calls, games, clubs have been most involved. I think some of this is in play already, but if so it's not transparent enough. It seems like refs that make constant mistakes stay in the game while a big flub on a two way call can have you down reffing the Championship or lower in no time. But that may just be my perception. I'd also consider adding a second ref on the pitch. That way they can divide zones when following the play - like in a pk, one can watch the player, the other the keeper; in a free kick one can take the wall the other the offensive side. They added a second ref 20 years ago in hockey (which also has two linesmen, totalling four adjudicators over a much smaller area) and it has helped, although to be fair I think there are more off-puck infractions in hockey than there are in soccer.