“Players must show respect or the game suffers real damage”

After our article in ‘Soapbox Corner’ on the new ‘Respect’ programme being brought in to football so that there will be more respect for referees and fewer red cards as a result, we talked to Rob Blowes, a promising young referee who overcomes the fact that he has a hearing impediment and is already officiating in the Welsh League. Rob had spoken to us about managing his disability and his views on the game and gave us permission to use this revealing part of our discussion which shows how awful it can be if players do not show respect to refs.
“The match will probably stay in my mind for a long, long time. It was the first game I ever had to abandon and it is a game that my father Steve believes decked my confidence enough for me to lose out on promotion that year.
Both Pembroke and Newport were new teams within the Pembrokeshire League and I had very little knowledge of either team. I went in looking for what I thought would be a close but fair game. The alarm bells should have probably kicked off when a confrontation between me and the Pembroke players occurred early on in the dressing rooms as I noticed the keeper wore a shirt the same colour as Newport’s home kit, so I called out to him and was promptly ignored. Relying on the whistle to get his attention I was confronted with an overly aggressive attitude which, looking back with experience could have possibly been a cardable offence right there but, as this was only my second season, and still early within it, I simply did the naive thing and let it go.

Tone set for match

The trouble was it set the tone for the rest of the game although Newport, to their credit, turned up to play a game of football. Pembroke, however, were effing and blinding from the outset, a difficult situation when I couldn't really tell what was being said and in what context. Needless to say, things were heated and I could feel the tension but having only some idea of what had been said couldn't really act or defuse it like most referees would by telling both teams to quiet down and get on with it, or by enforcing the red card on the language problem itself. (I was after all only aware of the verbal abuse going on AFTER the game or rather after one specific incident.)

Boiling point reached

After a red card for a tackle early on by a Pembroke player, the second half kicked off and things settled down. I gave a penalty to Newport only to find that I had found the boiling point. Pembroke's keeper saved the shot and let hurl a full volley of angry words and marched towards the striker in such a way that it was confrontational. The striker stood his ground, but the rest of his team was clearly not going to stand for it and rushed in to give the guy a few boxing lessons.
All of a sudden almost all 22 players were punching, kicking and stamping in an obscene orgy of violence. There were some kung-fu flying kicks, studs up, aimed at the chest and face and even the substitutes and players sent off earlier in the game decided they'd join in.

Match abandoned

At that point in time I gave up blowing on the whistle and gave out the red card to those who I could guarantee did something, (this surprisingly wasn't all 22 players since I couldn't possibly remember 22+ separate incidents in one massive brawl)  and decided I was going to go home.
It didn't end there because a player from Pembroke claimed he was a qualified referee and stated that I had no right to abandon the game at that time since both teams had well over seven players each. Nor were the looks of disgust from certain players from both teams for my actions as we walked back to the dressing room of any help.
Here, after all, were twenty two grown men, most of them older than me, who had participated in a brawl and yet some still found it within themselves to look at me as if I was the man to pin the blame on.
Perhaps that wasn't intentional of them, I don't know. Regardless of that point, the effects of that game saw me refuse to referee a game without the guarantee of my father or a friend at the pitch with me. At every match, for a while, I was constantly glancing over with a thumbs up to them just to confirm that the verbal incitement wasn't occurring again. Obviously when I get a set of linesmen under me for matches I will be able to rely on them to fill in the holes of being deaf but until then... who knows how footballers out for a so-called ‘friendly’ match after a week’s work will react.
If they just got on with the game and let refs do their job to the best of their ability then there would be more people ready to take up the whistle – and far, far fewer red cards!