Want better refs? Do something about it!

If fans, clubs and the media want better referees what are they doing about it?

There was a lot of publicity in the media recently about Rangers calling a ‘summit’ of other clubs to discuss their concerns about the standard of refereeing. Since then, there has been even more negative publicity about referees in the last week, culminating in a leading official requiring police protection. The SFU view on this is made clear in this post.  No reasonable football fan can believe that this is not an appalling state of affairs and that if something doesn’t change then we’ll see yet more stories of intimidation and threats. What most people want to know is what will it change? What they generally mean by this is, what are the referees going to do about it? In the meantime, it’s still open season on refs...

The media love all this: in their daily search for eyeballs (i.e. money), the chance to stoke controversy via click-bait headlines about refereeing standards is manna from heaven. OK, the BBC might not need advertisers’ money or sponsorship, but they too want to maintain their viewing figures, so they employ people who they know will say controversial things. That other branch of the media – social media – also profits by providing a platform for outrageous views and behaviour. Yet, I suggest the vast majority of people who speak, write and pontificate about this (I include myself in this) could not referee a match properly to save themselves. That doesn’t mean they can’t criticise (I may have been critical of referees myself at times!), but it does mean that they should realise that the situation won’t change if all we do as fans, clubs and reporters/pundits is carp from the sidelines and put all the onus on our referees.  

Let’s look at some facts, some questions and some opinions.  

1.    The quantity and quality of referees can’t change overnight.  It takes years for referees to reach the required standard for top-level games. Change is going to be time-consuming and requires a lot of effort. 

2.    Do you know how much work goes into vetting and assessing referees to try to make sure they are as good as they can be?  Answer, a huge amount.  The people who do this really care.

3.    Do you know who has been promoted and demoted from the Category 1 officials list?  Yes, referees do get demoted!

4.    Do you know the real reason why Scotland has no referees at the World Cup?  I do, and it’s not what you might expect.

5.    People say, “let’s make our referees full-time.” Anyone who thinks this is an instant solution should quickly realise it’s not. Our current Category 1 referees get c. £1,000 a match at Premiership level once expenses are included. They also have jobs outside football. They are not going to give up main source of income to become full time officials unless football can match their overall pay. This means the game would have to find a lot of additional money. That money would have to come from the clubs (largely via you and me).  Premiership clubs are already paying an additional six-figure sum every season for VAR.  Most senior clubs have loans from the Scottish government (taken up to get them through the Covid pandemic) to pay off. Scottish football, in case you didn’t know, isn’t flush with cash.

6.    Referees and their assistants get abuse and threats, occasionally descending to violence, across Scotland every week. As noted, we saw a case of this just last week.  In what other job would people willingly put up with this?  If, say, well-known pundits were shouted at and abused for 90 minutes as they comment on matches and have vile personal abuse directed at their families throughout the week, would they be quite so sanguine about criticising referees?

7.    Unsurprisingly, referee recruitment and retention are major problems. The former less so than the latter, but too many start out and do a few years then give up, whether for family, financial or (very often) personal reasons, the latter because they don’t need the abuse they get every week.

8.    What are our major clubs doing to address this (apart from complaining)? How many of them carry adverts in their programmes promoting refereeing?  How many of them have shown the referee recruitment videos on their scoreboards? A few have, but not many.  How many of them try to mitigate criticism of officials or encourage fans to try the refereeing course?  How many of the clubs’ Community organisations encourage youngsters to become referees once they are old enough? If clubs truly want better referees, they need to do more.

9.    Referees, it’s said, “have never played the game at any decent level.” How many of those saying this have?  And of those ex-player pundits who criticise our refs for “not knowing the game,” how many of those could honestly answer in the affirmative a referee’s not unreasonable retort, “how many of you ex-players actually understand properly the laws of the game?”

10.More specifically, how many of our current clubs are doing enough to suggest, politely, to fans via their weekly mailers and social media posts, that abusing the match officials might be not the best way to encourage other people to get involved in refereeing? Ditto the media – it’s far too easy to complain and seemingly far too difficult to make the effort to understand that we’ll never get better referees if no-one wants to take it up because of the abuse and threats they might (will) get.

The Scottish Football Union is working with the Scottish Refereeing Associations to help them recruit and retain referees. We recognise that nothing is going to change overnight, but we need to start somewhere. We would encourage all clubs, at every level, to do what they can to reduce abuse of match officials and to encourage fans to become referees. There are some suggestions above. Otherwise, all that will happen is the continuing merry-go-round of criticism. Other sports manage to accord respect towards match officials. Why can’t football?   

Alastair Blair, Ops Director, the Scottish Football Union

If you want to find out more about becoming a referee, start with the link to the relevant page on the SFA website, here: https://www.scottishfa.co.uk/scottish-fa/referees/referee-education/referee-courses/