Don’t be surprised if referees think you and your manager are c***s

The PGMOL only has itself to blame for the current state of refereeing hovering uneasily between dysfunction, accusation and bias.

It has not protected its officials and has turned a blind eye to relentless, constant abuse of the most intimidating and excoriating sort, on and off the pitch and has effectively told them to suck it up, it’s all part of the game, son. I don’t know how or why it’s even legal for an employer to act like this. They surely have a duty of care. Maybe because fans pay so much, they and the game feel they’re entitled to behave how they want.

For it not to damage every individual’s mental health just isn’t possible. Imagine what it’s like being sworn at, threatened and impugned every day of your working life by thousands of individuals?

It’s pointless to tell officials just to grow a thick skin, because we’re not geared to withstand this ceaseless level of disrespect. And to top it all off, any referee that acts badly, shows discrimination, swears at a manager or player, or displays any negative or insulting traits, is destroyed. Are we mad? What do we want – a human or a pinata?

Players treat the officials with thinly disguised contempt and lie and cheat at every turn. How many times have we seen a player kick the ball out and pretend it deflected off an opposition player? It’s almost instinctive cheating and they end up abusing the officials who spot it, as do fans. And yet we complain if they get anything wrong and even when they don’t.

They’ve been humiliatingly neutered by VAR, only introduced because they weren’t trusted. Now they can’t even make important decisions for themselves. They are diminished. Once football’s arbiters, now they are mere bystanders and yet they are still subjected to relentless abuse. VAR’s inadequacies have, if anything, made things worse for referees now bullied into accepting someone else’s decisions, yet having to face the wrath caused by them.

It is as if the referee isn’t crucial to the playing of the game. As though he is a mere interloper, getting in the way with these awkward things called ‘decisions’. As if we don’t need them at all. You’ve been calling him a c*nt and a disgrace and you’re surprised he’s cracked and called you and your manager a c*nt and a disgrace. We can hand it out but can we take it? It seems not.

If they do, we act as shocked as if we’ve seen a nun f*cking a horse. We’re weak, pathetic and need to take a look at ourselves and behave better. We can’t go on behaving like this and expecting a different outcome. The status quo is dysfunctional and is, in large part, a response to how we and players behave. Want it to be different? Then change the default behaviour.

No one is getting coked-up because they’re happy with their lot. If you are coping well and are in a healthy, happy situation in life, putting toxic, heart-attack-inducing drugs into your bloodstream probably doesn’t seem like a good idea to all except a dedicated hedonist, but if you’re paranoid, miserable and feel oppressed, getting loaded is to be embraced as a way out. Of reality. We’re being shown the consequences of our actions right before our eyes and it seems to me some are very busy victim blaming in order to excuse themselves.

All of us who have invented reasons to prove bias or inadequacy of some sort without thinking to address the same issues in ourselves are to blame. In case you’ve forgotten, football doesn’t really matter, beyond the big ownership stuff. If you finish 12th instead of 10th because of a bad decision losing you three points, it doesn’t matter. You’re overreacting. Shrug it off.

For perspective, I was once at Hibs and a home fan lost his mind and was freaking out at every decision against a poor Hibs side. Standing and berating the ref with every insult you’ve ever heard. Next to me was a young boy with his dad. And he had that wide-eyed, puzzled, fearful look kids have when in an adult world they don’t understand. I saw him hug tightly into his dad, who put his arm around the lad. The kid half-whispered, ‘why is he like that?’ His dad said he was disagreeing with referee decisions, but knew he was making no sense. It didn’t adequately explain the raging madness. ‘He’s just mad,’ said the boy flatly in that gauche way children have.

Yet it was totally normal and ignored by most as a typical thing we see at a game. That’s how bent out of shape our perception of behaviour is inside football grounds.

The thing is, we’ve got a perfectly good example of how to treat referees in the women’s game, where there is none of this reflexive abuse by players or fans. Referees smile and talk to players like normal people. It’s every bit as competitive but it feels like no one is over-burdened with lack of perspective. A foul or a booking isn’t treated as a human rights crime. There is little or no play-acting or behaving like a toddler having a tantrum. There doesn’t seem to be a default to trying to cheat all the time. In short, it is as though these are adults, playing a game.

I won’t pretend to be holier than thou about this; I’ve done my fair share of abusing officials, but not anymore. Almost dying last year gave me the ultimate love-over-hate perspective. It pricks any ego and judgemental entitlement you might have.

Seeing David Coote’s hunted, haunted, ghoulish eyes, driven to abusing himself with drugs by the prolonged and repeated negative reaction to how he does his job was awful. I don’t care how bad any official is at a football match, or who they do or don’t favour. Abusing a referee hurts them and hurts you. It’s stupid and insults both of us.