Football is often referred to as the ‘Beautiful Game,’ with the glitz and glamour of cars, houses, women and huge money contracts. The elites of the game have never been so far apart from the man on the street.
Sunday League football however – continues to be the people’s game with pitches like pigsties, that are on hills in the middle of nowhere. Nonetheless, there is cash in hip to be made at the level as refereeing is quite appealing for young men and women.
Jacob* – had previously played at a semi-professional level in Ireland at youth level before going on to referee matches as what was a ‘simple way of earning money’ alongside working full-time during the week with referees at the level earning around €30 per match.
After a few weeks of the usual shouts of “ah ref” and “that’s not a f***ing foul” in his first few matches, refereeing under 13s matches, Jacob realised that refereeing wasn’t as easy as the €30 per match seemed at first.
What’s ironic is the worst abuse was given – was in an under 13s girls game between two unnamed teams. After giving a string of free-kicks to the home team, the away dugout began to verbally abuse Jacob: ‘The manager told me to f*** off, which at under 13s football is really excessive – it doesn’t set a good example. So I told him to watch his behaviour, which he initially agreed to. I gave a foul to the home team and he flipped. So I went over to him and gave him a red card and told him to go to the car park.’
Two in three referees quit refereeing after two years due to the abuse they receive from players, coaches and parents according to data gathered by the Oireachtas. In this case, Jacob was threatened: ‘He told me to f*** off and as he was walking off the touchline, he told me that he would meet me in the car park.’
‘I wasn’t worried, but as the game went on – I was like what if? I knew there was little chance of him actually hitting me or whatever, but what if he did?’
In April 2023, a referee was attacked in a game between Bay FC of Dundalk and Sporting BJD of Ballyjamesduff in the North East Football League resulting in the game being abandoned.
‘After the game, he came over to me, he was semi-apologetic. He said I made a few bad decisions – but he shouldn’t have threatened me. I told him that he shouldn’t talk to referees like that and that you need to set a better example – like it’s under 13s girls football.’
If abuse continues to happen to match officials and referees, there will be no game. Referees are a key part of football. While the football associations of Ireland, Northern Ireland and England have put plans in place to eradicate abuse on referees, it is clear that the plans have not worked, with over 293 out of 900 referees have been physically abused at matches – while 908 referees had been verbally abused out of 927, according to a questionnaire done by the BBC.
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