Radio documentary suggestions

[Joe]

Hi all,

I am working on an hour-long documentary for national radio focusing on referees both at grassroots and professional levels.

As a large part of our target audience, I hope you don’t mind me using this platform to gauge an idea on what you would be interested to hear in the show.
Is the abuse of match officials a hot topic of discussion you’d like to continue or are there other aspects of the job you’d like the spotlight on?

 

[ChasObserverRefDeveloper]

It would be good to include some fairly simple (for referees) questions, then give the answers, so that the audience realise they don't know much. I'm sure that several regular contributors on this forum would love to supply the questions (and answers)!
Abuse of officials is a regular hot topic (I did a piece on Radio 4 nearly 20 years ago, taking a BBC Radio presenter to a youth match with a female referee - she was genuinely shocked by the verbals aimed by parents at the 16-year-old referee)

 

[Ge0rge]

It would also be great to show the referees human side. Alot of the criticism of the referees in the media paints them as these evil people who hate football, whereas if anything its the opposite.

 

[santa sangria]

What gorgeous George said: anything that makes people realise just how much referees love football!
And quizzes are great. Check out Dutch Referee Blog for examples, or areferee.com (sometimes out of date).

Abuse of match officials is a topic, yes, and it is something that concerns us all and we all hate to deal with. Abuse of match officials on TV not being punished and the knock-on effects at grassroots, yes, it is a topic. But, beware, it does not dominate. I think it's also fair to point out that there are plenty of other issues in the refereeing world: pay/conditions, training/mentoring, recruitment/numbers, promotion (that's a big one on here because this forum gathers the most enthusiastic refs), VAR, handball, law changes, law ignorance, fitness/movement, teamwork, timing, psychology of refereeing... and there's a big topic than runs through a lot of these: "match control".

And a side note, what the Crouchy pod has done - with Dre and Dean - has been fantastic. Just making referees human, normal, so healthy for the whole game.

There are also a lot of different types of grassroots referee (in my limited exp, of course)... students as a part time earner, parents/coaches that fell into it, aspiring pros on the ladder, community-driven, leadership skills-driven, socially-driven etc. For me, I treat it more like people "invest" in extreme sports: I pack in a lot of matches right on the edge of my abilities, travel for intense tournaments, constantly competing - and get paid - to be involved in football - amazing!

(I am outside the UK in a country where the pay/conditions/organisation is OK)