The Ref Stop

Utah’s zero-tolerance policy regarding referee abuse

RefIADad

RefIADad

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The Ref Stop
I find this policy a little bit ridiculous. As a parent, if you told me that I could no longer watch my son or daughter play football because one of their teammates' parents shouted mean things at a referee, I'm not sure how happy or reasonable I would be about that. Ban the guilty party; ban them for life for all I care. But why punish others?
 
RyantheRef said:
I find this policy a little bit ridiculous. As a parent, if you told me that I could no longer watch my son or daughter play football because one of their teammates' parents shouted mean things at a referee, I'm not sure how happy or reasonable I would be about that. Ban the guilty party; ban them for life for all I care. But why punish others?
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Same reason coaches make the whole team run for a plater’s transgressions: it creates peer pressure. The theory is that the parents (and coaches) who ignored the knucklehead because they didn’t want to get involved now have a direct inncentive to solve the problem.
 
Waste of time unless it's 'as seen on tv'... hence needs to come from FIFA and filter down... as I've said before
What was that said about 'doing the same thing over and over... and expecting different results'?
 
RyantheRef said:
I find this policy a little bit ridiculous. As a parent, if you told me that I could no longer watch my son or daughter play football because one of their teammates' parents shouted mean things at a referee, I'm not sure how happy or reasonable I would be about that. Ban the guilty party; ban them for life for all I care. But why punish others?
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I would do this anyway since I'm a referee and don't want to see my colleagues harassed/abused on the field, but if my son's team had a parent who was doing this to officials, I would be the one telling them to knock it off immediately. I would like to watch my kid play, and some idiot who could prevent me from doing that is not going to get away with a behavior that keeps me from watching his games.

The logic behind this is sound. The issue will be whether it's properly enforced.
 
Seen many of these before even in some form as high as EPL but haven't heard of any being successful because at the end of the day money supersedes everything else.

At lower levels it takes resources to enforce them and that costs money also leagues lose teams and players to others less strict leagues. At higher levels you lose players who put bums on seats and generate money.
 
RyantheRef said:
I find this policy a little bit ridiculous. As a parent, if you told me that I could no longer watch my son or daughter play football because one of their teammates' parents shouted mean things at a referee, I'm not sure how happy or reasonable I would be about that. Ban the guilty party; ban them for life for all I care. But why punish others?
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I think this is actually the whole point - it encourages parents to "self-police" and creates a collective responsibility for preventing abuse.
 
Matthew said:
I think this is actually the whole point - it encourages parents to "self-police" and creates a collective responsibility for preventing abuse.
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It removes the responsibility from the association to protect referees and foists it on amateur parents.
 
RyantheRef said:
It removes the responsibility from the association to protect referees and foists it on amateur parents.
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I disagree. The association still has a responsibility to act when abuse happens, but they can't have people at every match, so placing the onus on those who are present to tackle it is the way forward.
RyantheRef said:
Ban people who behave badly. Appoint a neutral field marshal at every field to police spectator behaviour.
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Great idea on paper, but it's totally unworkable. To use my league as an example, there are hundreds of games across tens (if not hundreds) of pitches/grounds accross the area. Multiply that around the country and you're going to need tens of thousands of neutral "field marshals".
 
Matthew said:
I disagree. The association still has a responsibility to act when abuse happens, but they can't have people at every match, so placing the onus on those who are present to tackle it is the way forward.

Great idea on paper, but it's totally unworkable. To use my league as an example, there are hundreds of games across tens (if not hundreds) of pitches/grounds accross the area. Multiply that around the country and you're going to need tens of thousands of neutral "field marshals".
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Neutral is difficult, but one Respect Marshal per team is workable, and happens in my county (one of the largest footballing counties in England) at age groups up to under-14's.
 
It’ll probably take a couple of bans, but if that happens people will start to realize it’s serious and start telling the idiot parents to shut up.

Once parents and coaches realize that parents may not be able to be on the sidelines, they’ll start telling the problem parents to either stay quiet or leave.
 
RefIADad said:
It’ll probably take a couple of bans, but if that happens people will start to realize it’s serious and start telling the idiot parents to shut up.

Once parents and coaches realize that parents may not be able to be on the sidelines, they’ll start telling the problem parents to either stay quiet or leave.
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More importantly, it takes the publicity of the match abandonment or the clearing of the touchlines for them to take effect. Once the referees know they can do this (and they are fully supported by their FA), then they will start using the power more.
 
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