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Please stop the gratuitous bad language
I’m sorry to return to one of my pet hobby-horses this week but I really do abhor very bad language anywhere in sport but especially on the sports fields of our own county.
Especially awful is the sort of filth that sometimes comes when officials turn a deaf ear to this gratuitous form of aggression, be it the referee or club officials who pretend it doesn’t happen, and especially if there are young children watching the game and listening to what goes on.
Now I’ve always criticized football for this sort of behaviour and believed, perhaps foolishly, that local rugby players and supporters were above that sort of thing: that there was a good humour towards the opposition and referees that showed the round ball game a thing or two. But I was wrong because recently I was forced to listen to the worst, vilest language I have ever heard, especially since there is a ‘code of conduct’ laid out in clubhouses and programmes about behaviour.
Ignoring the code of conduct
It clearly expresses the WRU’s concern over ‘Abuse of Match Officials’ and unequivocally states,
“Clubs ... have the responsibility for the behaviour of their members, players, coaches and regular supporters towards match officials and are expected to take all reasonable steps to protect match officials from any form of abuse.”
Now I’m all for a little good humour from the touch-line which sometimes even has the referees forced to give a smile but a few weeks ago I attended a local derby where the play was hard, uncompromising and entertaining, as it should be, but some of the home supporters behaved in a quite appalling manner where utter filth was poured towards the ref by people who should know better, and was easily heard by a number of kids and women nearby since I was 50 metres away and could hear it loud and clear.
One could argue that the match official should have reported it and since he did not perhaps there was no harm done – but that is a false get-out clause because youngsters will ape their elders, especially those they admire on the sports field, as they do with some of the idiots living in their own non-awareness bubbles in top football.
Ignorance is bliss
Should I have said something by marching across and asking them to be quiet? Perhaps I should have done just that so I have a minor part to play in the complicity but I did at least report it to club officials. Needless to say, they hadn’t heard a single word or seen one oaf walking up and down the touchline, red of face and screaming abuse with such ferocity that I thought he might have had a heart-attack!
The saddest thing of all for me is that the vast majority of the club are smashing people one can only be proud to know, which has prevented me, on this occasion, from naming the club, and the individuals who clearly think that this kind of language, including the awful C-word on at least 10 occasions, the F-word much more, and the referee being called a ‘cheating B******’ as his reward for giving up his time on a Saturday afternoon. If I lived near there I would be unable to take children to listen to that dross – and I can just imagine what my wife would have done had she been forced to listen to such vile invective!
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