Who’d be a football ref when even kids are up for a ruck?

Stories about grassroots football referees being outrageously abused come along almost as often as Conservative Party leadership contests.

Just a week ago, the Merseyside Youth League cancelled all fixtures in protest at numerous instances of “inappropriate and threatening” behaviour towards officials. Football Association disciplinary reports for last season highlighted a multitude of appalling examples of attacks on referees, mostly by adult players and coaches, but also by parents during children’s matches – and even by the kids themselves. Incidents range from expletive-ridden berating from the sidelines, to significant assaults. It’s even worse to be a ref at a local football match than it is to be a Tory MP trying to vote against the whip on fracking.

The culture of abuse towards referees and their assistants is hardly new. When I went regularly to watch Cambridge United as a child, not a game would pass without some sort of rebuke from the stands. It wasn’t very original stuff, “Where are your glasses ref?” and “Oi ref, you’re a f***ing cheat!” was about as insightful as it got.

At the top level, match officials might have thought VAR would make their lives easier, but it has merely added another level to the criticism, which is more or less relentless from every direction. No wonder it filters down to the amateur and children’s leagues.

Towards the end of last season, I was walking past a recreation ground near my house, where a game was in full swing. It became immediately apparent that things were quite spicy and I paused to watch for five minutes. Tempers were becoming ever more frayed, and the referee was evidently irritating both sides by what they saw as his over-strict officiating. Sure enough, at another “bad” decision, the players lost it and surrounded the poor man, swearing and waving their hands. He backed off and backed off, presumably wondering – as I was – whether he was about to be physically set upon.

Thankfully it didn’t quite come to that, but it was an unpleasant spectacle and it felt remarkable that a bunch of adults could lose their shizzle to such an extent when the quality of the game was so obviously rubbish.

The apparent propensity of mums and dads to get shirty with those in charge of their kids’ matches is even more disheartening, although I’d like to be optimistic and imagine that it’s the exception rather than the rule.

Certainly, my experience this week of watching my son’s first matches for his school was broadly a positive one – scorelines aside. Throughout a trio of short games, the parents watching from the touchline were as good as gold to a man and woman. Perhaps the knowledge that the referees were all coaches from the company that organises football training at all the local schools kept the spectators in their place. The prospect of little Jonny or Jemimah being banned from an after-school club that effectively amounts to cheap childcare is not one that any parent wants to face.

Nonetheless, on the pitch there were various moments when the seven- and eight-year-old players threw up their hands in derision at what they regarded as erroneous calls, and I couldn’t disagree with my son that one of the goals in their final 5-1 defeat was probably offside. But I also had to point out to him that scuffing up the opposition’s penalty spot should have gotten him a yellow card.

In one of the matches, while the referee was helping a small boy with their laces, a number of the other players became engaged in some minor dispute that looked like it might spiral into something you’d expect to see in an Arsenal vs Man United match from the 1990s. “Calm down, boys!” I yelled from behind the goal, gaining a surprisingly immediate response from the players, who soon forgot their grumbling and got on with the match.

Refs in grassroots football are in short supply, with many having been driven out by the unpleasantness they face. But after my schoolmasterly intervention, perhaps I could join their ranks. And since it’s never a good thing to find yourself at a loose end for too long, maybe Liz Truss would like to sign up at the same time.