How can we get better referees in professional football?

You’d give them 6 tackles to get it right before booking them or sending them off.
We would have a real game on our hands, instead of the game being stopped for someone being in an opponent’s personal space and carded for standing on their shadow.

 

That is so true and the RU example is good point. The other thing I've wondered is without crowds how much of what we're talking about would be affected? There's no vocal pressure on the refs which one would think that would help them make better decisions. But as they're not and appear to be oblivious to the mess they're creating along with VAR I fear for the future of our game's integrity and value to it's supporters. It seems we don't matter.

 

There is plenty of vocal pressure from the players who make matters worse by their fake fouls and injuries. Take one simple rule from Rugby Union, only the Captain can speak with or query the refs decision. As Fats wrote earlier, any back talk is a free kick followed by 10 yards moving the ball forward. No surrounding the ref either. Ref should raise his hand and count down from 5 lowering a digit each time. Any player around the ref other than a Captain when he gets to 1 gets a yellow. The visual countdown clearly tells the fans and the players what the consequences will be. When players learn to shut the **** up and show some respect, this should feed into the crowd.

But honestly, this has to start at grass roots and if respect is enforced, we might see better football in about 10 years.

 

Yeah, absolutely .... it HAS to start with respect, but it’s been going on for years. I remember my first father-in-law telling me, with much chortling and glee, about an incident when he played for his local park team in the late 60s. They were so upset at the ref and the way he managed the game that they locked him in the changing rooms and dropped the key down a nearby drain. I was horrified, as I was playing rugby then and would never have even contemplated (well, maybe thought about once or twice) doing something like that. The ref was to be respected no matter how **** he was or how biased he was (one of our worst refs was one of our own who tried so hard to be fair that he gave everything against us!). We even had one ref (turned out he was a local vicar) who gave penalties against us for swearing (and the fact I played for a team full of boys from Leigh Park meant we were screwed, as 4 letters was about as far as many of them could go!)
Get the respect in, stop the players verbally abusing the officials or surrounding them (I love the counting on the finger trick) and move the free kick forward if there’s any abuse. A few matches and it would stop .... whether the fans would get it though is another matter .....

 

I totally agree, but the respect has to be earned, surely? Rugby referees are brilliant, the way they talk constantly to the players, warn them if they’re about to stray offside, explain exactly why a penalty has been given, and so on and so on. I would love to see the 10 metre rule introduced into football though, it would soon stop dissent in its tracks. Oh, and do the same if a manager shouts abuse from the touchline, too.

 

100 percent this. I remember a few refs who pre match would speak to both teams honestly and say there will be things they miss throughout the match but they be consistent, fair, and always give explanations for why they have made decisions providing we approached them respectfully. Unfortunately these refs stick out in the memory because they were the exception to the norm.

Also get fed up with the amount of times pre season there’s been a big announcement how refs won’t tolerate dissent and players surrounding the ref etc will be punished only once the season gets underway refs allow players to surround them with no repercussions.

 

Just get this fella to ref every game - he might well still get the decisions wrong but nobody is going to argue at least

 

Thats the slippery slope right there. First you demand to be called sir, then you want to be carried out on a litter, next thing you're pulling out red cards to your own theme music with a dance routine.

 

I'm not arrogant enough to demand to be called sir! They just did it!

 

Americans call everyone Sir.

An American friend of mine got arrested on a drunken spree in Los Angeles, and a cop pointing a gun at him shouted "Sir! Do not ****ing move, Sir! Or I will blow your ****ing brains out, Sir!"

 

Is that Minnesota? My old company we based there... they told me that s-i-r was slang for “w4nker”

 

I agree with the sentiment, but not the wording. For me in this instance, Respect needs to be lost, not earned. They should start being respected and then earn the right to keep it. Half the problem is they start with no respect from anyone

 

Yep. I think the players realised that a referee's tolerance level might be quite low when they've refereed their 6th or 7th game that day in the scorching heat! (That did happen BTW, although they weren't 90 minute matches).

 

1000% agree with this. I tend to keep the respect of the players by simply talking to them. My pre-match talk to the players is simple: the less I get involved the happier you'll be. I'm also happy to explain my decisions to them but if they come up screaming and shouting in my face they'll go straight in the bin. I must be doing something right because I've only sent 2 to the bin since it was introduced.

 

I quite like the sin bin, gives me a nice breather

 

I’m taking that to mean you’re ok with the litter and your own theme then. Bloody refs are all the same.

 

good on him.

The amount of abuse they have to take it’s actually nice to see a ref standing up for himself for once

 

Yes, that's a better way of putting it. Respect the uniform, unless and until the person wearing it does things to cause loss of respect.