You agree to respect the referee by engaging in a game in which there is a referee. He does NOT have to earn your respect. You give that respect freely and unconditionally. (Even if inside you are thinking he's a frog-faced xxxx, even if he's David Elleray.) That is a large part of what sport is about. That SHOULD apply to both players and fans. If it really did then decision-making would certainly improve.
If you don't want to be refereed play backgammon, climb mountains, ride a mountain bike, take up parcours.
There ARE terrible referees. There ARE men especially who start refereeing for the wrong reasons. There are also thousands who do it because they love the game and would hate to think they are ruining it.
I wouldn't do it for anything.
It is terrible that Kiwomya was kicked out of the game ........ but we should have targeted the offender. He hadn't told us how tough he was, he'd told us what he was afraid of. Send Shaw to chase him, push JBW up on him, see how he likes that. Keep, keep doing it. Crying to the ref' will only get you so far. You deal with it, just like you deal with the unexpected and wrong in life. The fact remains that teams NEVER come to foul you because they are better than you - they foul you to intimidate you and stop you playing, because they don't believe they can beat you by being better than you.
I don't take the attitude I'd rather lose than play dirty. I'd rather win and make the opposition pay for playing in such a crude manner. If referees are to be human beings then mistakes will be part of the data, but we can't attribute every result we don't like to some generic failure or we destroy the purpose of the game.
You send your son out for a game of footie, you're not hoping he learns how to cheat successfully and fool the nice man who agreed to ref the game and is now being berated by a crowd of angry parents ........... If that nice man finally reaches the National League and misses stuff in front of 5,000 Chesterfield fans, does he deserve our anger or should we perhaps respect his courage in allowing the game to continue to exist, cos he certainly ain't getting rich on it?
As to the inference that Barrow persistently play this way, Stats are difficult as our league has apparently lost them, but I looked at seven weekends in which it turned out Barrow were never the dirtiest team and twice their fouls were down in single figures (even against Salford!). The most fouls I saw committed was by Maidstone who managed 21 in a 0-1 away win. The most we managed was 15 against Havant. On my quick survey the team who looked dirtiest, often hovering around 16 fouls a game was Eastleigh. Barrow are just middle of the road. The most gob-smacking stat I saw was Aldershot who committed only 3 fouls in a game they lost 4-0. Barrow's 14 fouls on Saturday would never have topped the stats in the seven weeks I looked at!
I don't know if the FA has improved but back when I was actively involved in the game it seemed particularly poor at pushing forward referees who had an intuitive understanding of the game and instead promoted those who sounded or looked the part (from what seemed to me a very middle-class point of view!) Back when I was a player the refs we players liked were also those who seemed destined never to get chances above our level! Those we had issues with climbed the ladder.
I've no issues with Dancing or SGB, who I think of as friends who are excellent and trustworthy voices on everything, but on refs I can't help thinking that unless we can reach the point at which we accept all decisions as honestly made, whether right or wrong, and just play on, football is sliding down a steep and inhuman slope. When you need VAR to ferret out the truth then someone is cheating. Sunday tea time, Ampadu slides in for the ball. The Wednesday player goes down under the challenge. The referee gives a penalty - I think I would've too. Only two people knew the truth. Ampadu knew he had kicked the ball. The Wednesday player knew his boot had caught Ampadu as he cleared the ball, he must have seen the ball change direction and known it wasn't his boot that caused it. If they had been playing snooker the Wednesday player would have been expected to call a foul on himself. He knew; the ball and an opponent feel different. At football he claimed a penalty. VAR showed Ampadu's florescent boot brilliantly playing the ball. No one thought to say perhaps the Wednesday player should have at least told his mates the final decision was right, but if he had maybe Fox wouldn't have immediately dived in to concede a hot-headed penalty and Barry Bannan might not have wasted the whole game arguing. Decisions do change the whole game, but not just by being wrong.
When a keeper makes a mistake everyone says he has to put it behind him, and as I know only too well, it really is one of the keys to success, but outfield players, entire teams and sets of fans prove themselves almost totally incapable of that same ability every single week, dwelling on incidents they only make more important with every minute that ticks by. And it loses whole games.
If you don't want to be refereed play backgammon, climb mountains, ride a mountain bike, take up parcours.
There ARE terrible referees. There ARE men especially who start refereeing for the wrong reasons. There are also thousands who do it because they love the game and would hate to think they are ruining it.
I wouldn't do it for anything.
It is terrible that Kiwomya was kicked out of the game ........ but we should have targeted the offender. He hadn't told us how tough he was, he'd told us what he was afraid of. Send Shaw to chase him, push JBW up on him, see how he likes that. Keep, keep doing it. Crying to the ref' will only get you so far. You deal with it, just like you deal with the unexpected and wrong in life. The fact remains that teams NEVER come to foul you because they are better than you - they foul you to intimidate you and stop you playing, because they don't believe they can beat you by being better than you.
I don't take the attitude I'd rather lose than play dirty. I'd rather win and make the opposition pay for playing in such a crude manner. If referees are to be human beings then mistakes will be part of the data, but we can't attribute every result we don't like to some generic failure or we destroy the purpose of the game.
You send your son out for a game of footie, you're not hoping he learns how to cheat successfully and fool the nice man who agreed to ref the game and is now being berated by a crowd of angry parents ........... If that nice man finally reaches the National League and misses stuff in front of 5,000 Chesterfield fans, does he deserve our anger or should we perhaps respect his courage in allowing the game to continue to exist, cos he certainly ain't getting rich on it?
As to the inference that Barrow persistently play this way, Stats are difficult as our league has apparently lost them, but I looked at seven weekends in which it turned out Barrow were never the dirtiest team and twice their fouls were down in single figures (even against Salford!). The most fouls I saw committed was by Maidstone who managed 21 in a 0-1 away win. The most we managed was 15 against Havant. On my quick survey the team who looked dirtiest, often hovering around 16 fouls a game was Eastleigh. Barrow are just middle of the road. The most gob-smacking stat I saw was Aldershot who committed only 3 fouls in a game they lost 4-0. Barrow's 14 fouls on Saturday would never have topped the stats in the seven weeks I looked at!
I don't know if the FA has improved but back when I was actively involved in the game it seemed particularly poor at pushing forward referees who had an intuitive understanding of the game and instead promoted those who sounded or looked the part (from what seemed to me a very middle-class point of view!) Back when I was a player the refs we players liked were also those who seemed destined never to get chances above our level! Those we had issues with climbed the ladder.
I've no issues with Dancing or SGB, who I think of as friends who are excellent and trustworthy voices on everything, but on refs I can't help thinking that unless we can reach the point at which we accept all decisions as honestly made, whether right or wrong, and just play on, football is sliding down a steep and inhuman slope. When you need VAR to ferret out the truth then someone is cheating. Sunday tea time, Ampadu slides in for the ball. The Wednesday player goes down under the challenge. The referee gives a penalty - I think I would've too. Only two people knew the truth. Ampadu knew he had kicked the ball. The Wednesday player knew his boot had caught Ampadu as he cleared the ball, he must have seen the ball change direction and known it wasn't his boot that caused it. If they had been playing snooker the Wednesday player would have been expected to call a foul on himself. He knew; the ball and an opponent feel different. At football he claimed a penalty. VAR showed Ampadu's florescent boot brilliantly playing the ball. No one thought to say perhaps the Wednesday player should have at least told his mates the final decision was right, but if he had maybe Fox wouldn't have immediately dived in to concede a hot-headed penalty and Barry Bannan might not have wasted the whole game arguing. Decisions do change the whole game, but not just by being wrong.
When a keeper makes a mistake everyone says he has to put it behind him, and as I know only too well, it really is one of the keys to success, but outfield players, entire teams and sets of fans prove themselves almost totally incapable of that same ability every single week, dwelling on incidents they only make more important with every minute that ticks by. And it loses whole games.