The Ref Stop

Fulham Suspensions

It's the totally unacceptable intimidation that followed which aggravates the overall crime
THIS is what I am scared of, you see it all the time down a local park between players. An amateur in a park with little to no spectators and no ARs is going to be far more likely to then escalate that act to violence. They HAVE to ensure it is punished severely.
 
The Ref Stop
It is the leading with Mitrovic's head that does it for me. Mitrovic leans his head in towards Chris Kavanagh who bends backwards whilst walking backwards to avoid the head to head pushy thing players do. Chris Kavanagh was egoless and he reacted superbly to an unbelievable amount of intimidation and attempts at escalation.

The fact that anyone would argue grabbing an official and then walking towards them with your head forward as they have to limbo dance their way out of the situation isn't violent conduct blows my mind.

Seriously? If Kavanagh had stood his ground and not backed away they would have been head to head.
My overriding point is that I think the LOTG should recognize 'improper conduct towards a Match Official' because the threshold for VC is different towards a MO than it is towards anyone else
 
For me it's simple a 12 month suspension. No ifs, no buts. A full 1 year ban, this is what is required. No action against Fernandes and look what happens a few weeks later. Token action now and next time it could be worse for the official.
 
So what are you suggesting would have been appropriate? He chose to unnecessarily shove an official with force because he was having a tantrum over not being given a throw-in - I'm baffled that anyone on here thinks they'd do anything less than immediately dismiss if that happened to them.

They're different yes - which is why 3 matches for him and 10 for Mitrovic is where I'd pitch the suspensions.

I completely agree with you about the suspensions. 3 games and 10 games are miles apart.

I think you need to watch the Bruno incident again.
Man Utd won the throw in. Bruno tried to retrieve the ball. A-A then runs off with the ball. The AR decides to grab Bruno's arm to stop him. A-A then throws the ball into Bruno's stomach (easy caution) but the AR (who has been SUPER keen upto this point) is no longer interested.
So A-A has basically tried to get Bruno to react and get sent off TWICE and the AR, a mere 0m away has decided Bruno is one that must be manhandled. Bruno then uses the exact same force to push the ref to the side.

I have absolutely no problem with a 3 game ban for Bruno here. You can't put your hands on a ref even if he is having a shocker.
However the FA clearly knew this would have opened a huge can of worms and they'd have been giving the AR a holiday as well.

But Mitrovic was screaming in a referee's face, pushed him aggressively then tried to get face to face with him and had to be restrained...
It's exponentially worse than the Bruno incident.
 
The suspension should be for the rest of the season. 10 games seems right, and by adding just one more game you have very different optics when you hear “rest of the season”.

I’m guessing it will be six. Anything less, and every grassroots referee in England should protest by banding together and not working matches the next weekend or two. A standard suspension basically means the FA does not care about abusive or physical behavior toward match officials
Seems a bit radical, but would definitely make a point!
 
I completely agree with you about the suspensions. 3 games and 10 games are miles apart.

I think you need to watch the Bruno incident again.
Man Utd won the throw in. Bruno tried to retrieve the ball. A-A then runs off with the ball. The AR decides to grab Bruno's arm to stop him. A-A then throws the ball into Bruno's stomach (easy caution) but the AR (who has been SUPER keen upto this point) is no longer interested.
So A-A has basically tried to get Bruno to react and get sent off TWICE and the AR, a mere 0m away has decided Bruno is one that must be manhandled. Bruno then uses the exact same force to push the ref to the side.

I have absolutely no problem with a 3 game ban for Bruno here. You can't put your hands on a ref even if he is having a shocker.
However the FA clearly knew this would have opened a huge can of worms and they'd have been giving the AR a holiday as well.

But Mitrovic was screaming in a referee's face, pushed him aggressively then tried to get face to face with him and had to be restrained...
It's exponentially worse than the Bruno incident.
I'll accept all this as true, as I don't have access to a clip with wider contect. And even accepting all that as true, I don't see any of that as mitigation that makes the shove on the match official suddenly not worth penalising.

I recently sent a player off for grabbing an opponent round the throat (lovely example of copycat behaviour BTW!). And his defence was "but that guy shoved my teammate". As I'm sure you can imagine, I didn't consider that a reason not to give the red card and the same applies here - I don't really care what happened in the build-up or what other cards may have resulted, aggressively shoving a match official should have resulted in red, end of story.
 
For me it's simple a 12 month suspension. No ifs, no buts. A full 1 year ban, this is what is required. No action against Fernandes and look what happens a few weeks later. Token action now and next time it could be worse for the official.
Given that Di Canio only got 11 games for forcibly pushing Paul Alcock to the floor, and David Prutton 10 games for what actually was an assault on Alan Wiley, he absolutely will not be getting a year ban. Even Cantona only got 8 months for a serious assault that he was successfully prosecuted for and initially given a prison sentence, OK not on a referee but he launched indiscriminately into a packed crowd.

I feel that there needs to be some perspective here. What Mitrovic did was absolutely wrong, he needs to be made an example of, but it wasn't a serious assault that caused any harm, and calls for things like a year long suspension are way off the mark.
 
Should be zero tolerance.
Year would be good.
Short ban for this means acts of intimidation or aggressive behaviour only get a couple of match bans.

Overall the bans and fines shoukd be bigger. It’s obvious.
 
Should be zero tolerance.
Year would be good.
Short ban for this means acts of intimidation or aggressive behaviour only get a couple of match bans.

Overall the bans and fines shoukd be bigger. It’s obvious.
While I would be a fan of radically increasing bans for anything directed at officials, I think that needs to be communicated in advance before radically changing from past practices.

To invoke zero tolerance, the first step is to actually toss anyone who makes any contact with a referee while arguing. And do it every time. The NBA does it to their millionaires and--surprise, surprise--it almost never happens. (While a basketball team doesn't play short if someone is tossed, it still has a huge impact on a game to toss a star.) And then leagues have to have serious consequences for any red that is more than very minor contact with the refs. The problem is there is just no appetite for this. And it's really a shame.
 
I think Fernandes should have been sent off, but the standard 3 game suspension would have been sufficient in that case. He makes unnecessary contact with a match official and with some force, but to a lesser degree than Mitrovic.

If Fernandes had been given 3 games off and Mitrovic now gets ~10 games, that would have looked like taking both incidents seriously, while also still acknowledging the difference in aggression between them.

Unfortunately, because Fernandes was missed, I worry that 0 games for him and 10 games for Mitrovic will feel like too big a distinction to make between two incidents that were in reality, not miles apart. Which means rationale exists for them to bottle it and only give him the standard suspension or a very small additional punishment.
Totally agree. I was so disappointed that Howard Webb didn’t push for some type of ban on Fernandes.
 
Totally agree. I was so disappointed that Howard Webb didn’t push for some type of ban on Fernandes.
He couldn't, because the match officials had confirmed they had seen the incident. Retrospective action can only be taken if the match officials missed it or the standard punishment didn't fit the level of the offence. The officials did see it, and there was no punishment so there was no offence.
 
While I would be a fan of radically increasing bans for anything directed at officials, I think that needs to be communicated in advance before radically changing from past practices.

To invoke zero tolerance, the first step is to actually toss anyone who makes any contact with a referee while arguing. And do it every time. The NBA does it to their millionaires and--surprise, surprise--it almost never happens. (While a basketball team doesn't play short if someone is tossed, it still has a huge impact on a game to toss a star.) And then leagues have to have serious consequences for any red that is more than very minor contact with the refs. The problem is there is just no appetite for this. And it's really a shame.
Totally agree.

I told recently on here about a nutty match with some reports. Both players got two extra matches on too of one for double yellows. As usual minimum possible.

Would be so easy to triple these for violence, agression, offinabus against officials.

But it’s the FAs that have no apetite.

For me, I work quite close with and am friends with people at my FA. I am thinking “do we share the same values”.
 
Virtually everyone who works at my CFA is also a referee, including the CEO. They're actually pretty good.
 
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