Originally Posted by
Bremsstrahlung
See the problem is I'm not referring to the 20+ year olds that are socially reasonably equipped and able to understand the frustration of people. By the time referees reach the NPL they are well accustomed to this verbal abuse.
I'm referring to the 14 year olds that start refereeing. I'm referring the roughly 50-100 new referees that sign up each year to become a refereee. I'm referring the referees that give it up before they reach seniors, the referees that refuse to move into NNSW state league referees branch, the referees that are happy to referee park soccer. They get turned off it. I had people stop me in the car park to tell me I was a disgrace because I pulled his 12 year old son up for a hand ball. I was able to laugh that off and move on. But I've seen/heard of teams surrounding referee cars preventing them from leaving.
If you bothered to read somebody else's opinion, you'd see I gave 2 ways to increase the quality that we get at NPL level.
1. Training, which can only do so much. Despite all the courses etc some referees will be unable to improve.
2. Increase the pool to choose from.
I then brainstormed ideas to increase the pool, or to at least retain referees. And that starts when they are 14, 15, 16, 17. Frankly, your "grow some balls and man up" comments don't really work for those referees that have given it a go to see what it's like. It's far easier to say, screw dealing with this abuse, than it is to persevere through it.
Yeh, you can say that to the current NPL referees, they are there because they don't really care what people think.
But, your losing 100s of potentially good referees too soon due to abuse. They are the facts.
