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Press Releases
Inside Out North West investigates assaults on football referees
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An investigation by Inside Out in the North West of England has discovered many football referees are quitting the amateur game because of violence and intimidation from players and spectators.
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The problem has become so serious that the Football Association (FA) is considering a call for counselling to be made available for match officials who have suffered abuse.
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Last season, 125 football referees were assaulted in England, with 42 reported incidents in the North West.
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For Wirral referee Brian Robinson, who has been refereeing in the West Cheshire League for eight years, a decision to send off the manager of a local team was to have grave repercussions eight months later when he was attacked during a night out with his family.
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Brian suffered a broken cheek bone and a fractured jaw and eye socket in the attack.
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He says: "We'd been out on a Sunday afternoon ... I turn around and there right in front of me are two lads that I recognise ... one of the lads stood in front of me and said, 'do you think I'd let you get away with it? Sending me dad off', and with that he punched me four, five times down to the floor and kicked me in the face."
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The FA says it is losing around 7,000 referees a season – many of them because of violence and intimidation.
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John Howard, Secretary of the Lancashire and Cheshire League, has been involved with the game both on and off the pitch for 54 years.
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He is now so concerned by the level of abuse directed at referees that he is calling on the FA to provide counselling for match officials: "Unfortunately I've found in the past, and from my long experience in the game, those referees at grass-roots level are left to their own devices – they get no help.
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"For some reason the Football Association have ignored what I feel is a very important part of refereeing. If referees are constantly being abused we lose them to the game and we can't afford it. On a Saturday afternoon in ten years' time we'll come down to Flixton Park and there'll be no games ... and football cannot afford to lose grass-roots level."
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The FA says attacks on referees are still relatively rare but it is determined to rid the game of violence and abuse.
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Ian Blanchard, Head of National Referee Development at the FA, says: "I would just like coaches, spectators and players at whatever level to think about the way they react to situations. The way they deal with the referee and the match official because without the referee we haven't got a game of football."
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Inside Out, Friday 26 January 2007, 7.30pm, 91Èȱ¬ One North West
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