It’s around this time of year I start to look forward to getting my Sundays back. Over the last 12 years, from September to April, I’ve followed both my sons around Surrey and beyond, watching them play football.
My youngest has two seasons left in youth football, my eldest has continued at university. But I become increasingly weary of how youth football is run, and touchline behaviour.
If you go back to 2009, the FA commissioned a couple of videos, where Ray Winstone played the part of angry parent. You can find them on google – watch them. They are as pertinent today as they were then, probably even more so.
If some parents behaved at work like they do on a touchline, they’d be out of work quickly.
Back in 2016, Graham Ekins, the then chairman of the Surrey Youth League, got national press attention for his comments in an email to all clubs, on the back of a particularly bad Sunday for on and off field behaviour. His final comment that “someone will end up being killed” made the front page of the Times. He was just thoroughly fed up with the increasing level of bad behaviour that was going unchecked. Consequently, the league instituted a “Respect” protocol to support referees, isolate troublemakers and a reporting system that identified repeat offenders.
Did it work?
At my son’s small club, only this season in a younger age group, a visiting parent took exception to our young referees handling of the game – this wouldn’t have happened if his son’s team had one – and allegedly intimated he would sort him, he was carrying a knife and that him and his mates would come back to our club and find him. Why? Because he didn’t like the way the referee had spoken to his son, the same lovely child who had spent the game “effing and jeffing” at him.
This is shortly to be the subject of an FA hearing (some 5 months after the event). The young referee has walked away from the game.
More recently, my youngest played against a local team with a notorious coach. His touchline behaviour has already seen him “sent off” this season. His treatment of all, but especially the children under his care, is very abusive. So, it’s no wonder his players take that onto the pitch. In my capacity as the club’s welfare officer, I contacted my counterpart in this club, not to complain but to make him aware about concerns around one of their players. He was getting bullied – everything was his fault – and his reaction was just to take it, he looked very unhappy. My sense was he was always on the receiving end. I could be wrong.
Football on a Sunday for many will be an escape. But it can also be a platform for life’s problems to come to the fore. Welfare is paramount and the FA, both at local and national levels, does a huge amount to make sure, as well as they can, that the environment around football is as safe as it can be. But those involved in clubs, like me, are volunteers. We are not psychologists or social workers. But more and more we need to be.
The coach mentioned above is no longer involved with his team, and we are told his coaching career is at an end. Its no surprise that the first time we played them this season his son, who is in the team, came of the pitch at half time and said he didn’t want to play anymore.
Between the two clubs, in this instance, common sense prevailed. Most of the time it doesn’t.
This weekend “Ray Winstone” will be on a touchline near you!
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