A&H

Unintentional violent conduct...

Matthew said:
I don't think it's possible to completely disconnect the two.

Football, particularly at the highest level, has normalised abuse of match officials as being a part of the game and it empowers the dregs of society to dish out the kind of abuse we're now seeing. It filters down to grassroots, so it's hardly a massive jump to think that it has an impact on what fans think is acceptable too.
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It is far from just referees though. Players get abuse on social media from so called supporters when they make an error, commentators and pundits get it when they say something fans don't agree with about their club, just look at the vile abuse Karen Carney got recently for evidence. Referees arguably get less abuse than players online, obviously because they make far less mistakes but also they are unlikely to be on social media, certainly not under their own names anyway.

The sad reality is just that there are some sad individuals in society, and they are cowards as they wouldn't dish out that abuse to a person's face.
 
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RustyRef said:
It is far from just referees though. Players get abuse on social media from so called supporters when they make an error, commentators and pundits get it when they say something fans don't agree with about their club, just look at the vile abuse Karen Carney got recently for evidence. Referees arguably get less abuse than players online, obviously because they make far less mistakes but also they are unlikely to be on social media, certainly not under their own names anyway.

The sad reality is just that there are some sad individuals in society, and they are cowards as they wouldn't dish out that abuse to a person's face.
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I'm not sure I take much notice of any alleged abuse in the form of Social Media posts
A small fraction of a very large number, will always be a small number, often an isolated contributor. So I can't see how this will ever be any different and I'm not sure how newsworthy it can be. Not to be misunderstood, I'm referring to some fairly sad people here. But we'll be taking the knee forever, unless the small fraction is silenced... which it won't be
 
Big Cat said:
It stands to reason that if fans see Ashley Barnes frothing venom in an AR's face without repercussions, that fan might act out the same behaviour in their Sunday Leagues
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And when those of us who will deal with this type of behavior do exactly that, we are accused of "having thin skin" (a coach accused me of exactly that when telling a coach to remove a parent who was abusive to me in a recent game) or "not allowing the players/coaches to have passion".

All you have to do is read the comments section in the two articles/discussions this week on The Athletic - one on Mike Dean and one as a discussion of what can be done in football to explain decisions more clearly - to understand that people don't want things to change. They want the ready "bad guy" of the referee to be there, and nothing that referees will do are ever going to generate more respect from the larger footballing public.
 
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