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The new procedure targets inappropriate behavior by parents and spectators directed at children, coaching staff members, referees, match officials, or other parents and spectators. This includes, but is not limited to:
Verbal abuse (insults or profanity), as well as physical assault or shoving of one’s own children;
Verbal abuse, physical assault, or shoving of staff members of one’s own team;
Verbal abuse, physical assault, or shoving of players or staff members of the opposing team;
Continuous challenging, verbal abuse, physical assault, or shoving of referees and match officials;
Verbal or physical altercations with other parents or spectators.
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If that's the situation in, and it can't be stressed enough, a children soccer game, then yes, abandoning the match is probably the right choice. I assume they are only defining a formal procedure for practices that already exist.
It's not extremely common in my area, but it is more common than you would think. Parents treat their children like lottery tickets when it comes to athletics. And God help you if you're the unfortunate umpire at a travel league game that makes a questionable call.
The youth sports industry is fucking gross and nobody seems to notice.
Source: we will not let our children participate in travel leagues and they do not want to participate in them either, for this specific reason.
Grown men getting into the face of 14 years old umpires over calls, at games for kids barely out of tee-ball. It just doesn’t matter that much.
I remember a coach who would flip over 20 gallon coolers and send ice and drinks flying in the dugout.. in front of his team of 10 years old umpires olds.
It was bad then. So many drunk parents in baseball. I tossed parents from basketball games for cussing at their kids. Volleyball was pretty chill tho.
Compare it to soccer where there is also a lot of whininess in the complaining about calls.
It's become accepted that vulgar, angry, disagreement is acceptable until it goes "too far".
Tantrums are just socially accepted in baseball, and some other sports.
The funny thing is, I became a ref because I was giving the ref of one of the games I was on the touchline coaching wasn't abusive, but definitely a constant barrage of second guessing. At the end of the match, one of the association members suggest that if I didn't like the level of refereeing that I should become a ref myself. I accepted the Pepsi challenge that rest of history. My favorite experience was a coach that was getting a bit grating. I remembered a line an old timer mentioned that I decided to give a try, "hey coach! you got an assistant? you better get 'em warmed up!"
As a coach, the absolute worst part of the 10 year experience absolutely was the parents. Luckily, I never had abusive parts. It was always over excited cheering for the dumbest things from people that had no clue about tactics and thinking that blindly booting the ball up the pitch was awesome. We had no player with the speed or skill of going over the top route one, so it was just a dumb play. Usually, by the end of the season some of the other parents could usually get them calmed down. It also helped to remind some of the over the top parents that this was recreational play, and everyone got the same t-shirt at the end of the season. Nobody was getting scholarships. It was basically bragging rights for the kids back at school.
Not all parents are assholes, and as a solo coach, there's no way I could have survived without some of the parent's support with various aspects of managing a team. By the third or fourth season, the parents that had started with me would help wrangle some of the other parents.
Extremely high level junior, was generally not an issue. As was true local league.
It was the intermediates, the travel leagues. Where "your kid is good but is still not going to be a pro" (the NBA sends a letter to all new D1 college players congratulating them on the effort they've put in to get this far - and to focus on their education, as the NBA drafts <1% of D1 college players, let alone anybody else). Those were the ones where the parents were convinced that their kid was going to be a pro and the only thing holding him back was "that fucking referee".
We had the power to eject those parents from the venue. Which was usually a conversation that went something like this:
Ref: You need to leave the venue until the end of the game.
Parent: It's my fucking kid's game and I'm not leaving and you can't fucking make me.
Ref: You're right, I can't remove you from the venue. I can however forfeit the game on your child's behalf.
Kid: Daaaad. [usually weary as this tends not to happen just the once]. Go and wait in the car. Pleaseeeee.
Parent: I will go and wait in the car, and we're going to wait and when you come out, you and I are going to fucking get into it, ref.
Cue security, if not police, walking refs to their cars.
damn. I feel like ideally the police or CPS should be called. Forfeiting the game seems like a mild consequence.
The money is pretty decent for two hours of work (and you can work games back to back to back).
In my area, there are a number of leagues. Only one has a large number of teenagers in the ref pool and they only are center refs for the youngest players. For the more competitive leagues, you almost never have a ref crew made up of only teenagers. Here, young refs are generally protected by having older refs as part of the crew. There is a whole system behind referee scheduling that most people don’t know about.
(Also, this about soccer in the US, I have no idea how other sports schedule their officials)
Ever watched the parents at those games?
> Should the behaviour continue, the referee will suspend the match for 10 minutes and send the teams off the pitch to their dressing room while once again asking coaches to attempt to de-escalate the behaviour of those in the stands.
> The FRF then detail the process behind using the black card as the final step: “If abusive behaviour persists after play resumes, the referee blows the final whistle. The match is permanently abandoned and cannot be resumed.”
Why is the remedy not simply ejecting the offenders? They get three chances to cancel the game, with the entirety of the punishments being towards people who did nothing wrong?
This is why the first remedy is to ask the coaches to get their parents under control. In general, if the abuse continues, the coach can be carded as that’s the only person the ref can discipline.
We're advised not to act too friendly with coaches because some people might think we're favoring their team. Involving the coach if you don't have to might create the opposite impression, that you're upset with the coach or team.
I've never experienced or heard of this being an issue in volleyball. I'm sure it's happened, particularly at the club level where parents are paying big money for their kids to play. Other sports, particularly basketball or football, it definitely happens.
Typically they will then escalate to the coach/club coordinator or something. By the time that is finished the guilty party has either left by their own volition already or through the other spectators.
Volleyball is a chill sport and I have had only once in refereeing junior games (<16/18) that a spectator went to far.
Most shenanigans if any is typically directed at the referees not even the players.
There has been a slight uptake in nastiness that I attribute to the sport becoming more popular.
(Context: the Netherlands, 12 years of experience from the lowest classes to 2nd division)
* All of the parents already know who the abusive parent is
* The first warning was the coach talking to the "entire group" (at a natural stopping point). The group dialed it back (there will always be some controversial calls), but that one parent didn't get the message.
* Finally, the game stopped suddenly (ball was in play, but in a neutral position) and they we're directly addressed by the ref.
This caught the abusers attention. This was an abnormal event. They were being addressed directly. Whether they realized they were the problem, they certainly recognized the social pressure. They recognized how embarrassing it was (sadly, they probably didn't realize how embarrassing it was for their kid) and decided to take the ref's suggestion to cool down.
You don't want to be the reason your kids team lost. You don't want your kid getting kicked of their team for your behavior.
Keep in mind these refs are often volunteers, working solo, have no official connection to the teams or field owners.
And there is a ref shortage virtually everywhere, at all levels and sports. Making it more difficult just isn't realistic.
Because if the situation is so heated up to warrant an abort, you'd need security staff or even riot police to yeet the offenders.
And no, I'm not joking. Private security staff ain't gonna break up a mob of 40 people bashing each others' heads in [1], and when it's 70 people involved [2], you gotta pray that they've KO'd each other out because even riot cops won't break up a fight club that large.
[1] https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/heilbronn/m...
[2] https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/erlangen-massenschlaege...
Youth football is a plague on children. My other children were smart enough to choose tennis and horses. I'm counting the games until my son realizes football is cesspool and asks to do literally anything else.
> My other children were smart enough to choose tennis and horses
I expect it to be the same here, with the referee deciding who the offending party is.
In reality, the game needs paused, and to forcably eject bad actors, then resume game.
So, that’s exactly what step one of this is: a signal to the crowd “behave yourself/make the bad actors behave themselves”.
For most people, soccer is a fun, pass time, and they are not abusive, and things work well. Overall there are enough cases of abuse that they have to go one step down the slippery slope and do something. That doesn't mean they have to go all the way. I don't know where the future will go. I suspect and hope that this is as far as it ever goes. But if things continue getting worse, maybe Romania has to say, 'that's enough. We're not going to do soccer anymore'.
And I'm serious about Romania completely stopping soccer in a country if things continue to get worse after this. Now there's probably a few other rules that they will need to adjust and tweak over the years, but if abusive fans and or abusive parents continue as a problem that means that the people of the country can't handle the game. No more Romania Intl the World Cup. They're not going to send a team because they don't allow soccer anymore.
Don't let it get that far. Whatever sport you do. Cheer when the opposing team makes a good play. Congratulate to the on a win.
I can accept bad officials as long as they're unbiased. As long as they're making bad calls against both teams or missing calls against both teams, I can deal with that. It's when the official is biased and making calls against one team that they're going to let go for the other team, that's when I have a problem. However you deal with that at the league level not in a game