Footballers have no respect for referees: Editor's Eye comment (From News Shopper)

Footballers have no respect for referees: Editor's Eye comment

11:06am Thursday 21st March 2013 in News By Andrew Parkes, News Shopper editor

WHAT an appaling week.

First I get hammered at hockey, next England throw in the towel against the arch enemy. Then, to cap it all I lose at cards, to my wife of all people.

Thoroughly disgruntled, I decided all I could do was watch Match Of The Day and the rugby highlights (the French game, not the English fiasco) with enough beer to numb the pain.

But, even through the haze, I couldn’t help but be wound up still further, and not just because a certain team in red scraped home 1-0.

No, my ire was directed towards football referees.

Not for any decisions they were taking, but for being such spineless, obsequious sheep.

Every week Premiership referees just stand there to be abused by over-paid, spoilt brats.

Compare this with the respect afforded to rugby referees and their shame is even greater.

The first step towards solving this quite appaling state of affairs would be to provide football refs with microphones.

This would have two advantages.

Firstly it would force refs to state clearly what offence has been committed.

Secondly, provided it is policed correctly in future, it will stop players abusing officials.

When rugby referee Nigel Williams had reason to speak to a player the conversation was as follows: ‘You leave the refereeing to me and you concentrate on playing, another word and you’ll be taking a rest’. How refreshing.

Heaven forbid football’s upper echelon would be anywhere near sensible enough to introduce a sin-bin equivalent for football, that level of common sense would be too much to ask!

But, to have some respect shown for referees, and therefore allow them to regain some self respect, surely that’s possible.