Prospect: Hypocrisy In Action

12 October 09 by Bill

Unless you’ve been living under a a rock, you’ll no doubt be aware that the FA have a campaign called Respect aimed at encouraging players, staff and fans to be respectful to match day officials.

The problem is, as been stated many times, respect is a two way thing. You cannot simply demand respect and show contempt at the same time. It just won’t work.

But that is exactly what Prospect, the union for referees has done. They’ve bitten the hand that feeds them and displayed their complete lack of respect toward the FA whilst beating the “Respect the Ref” drum in the process. Erm, hello, exactly how dumb are you?

Sir Alex Ferguson made a bit of a wrongun when he described referee Alan Wiley as ‘unfit’ and as you would expect, the FA have intervened and are looking into the incident. They will have numerous discussions on how best to handle the situation and dish out a punishment they deem appropriate. That is part of the FA’s job afterall.

The job of a referee is to officiate on match days. That’s it; it’s pretty simple; they known their role. Or at least you would hope they do. It turns out, their union has other ideas.

According to them, it is also their job to punish acts of disrespect shown to match day officials. They are happy to let the FA handle things; as long as the FA do what they want. If they don’t, Prospect will take matters into their own hands.

“If the FA don’t satisfy us, we would have to take legal advice” said Alan Leighton, the national secretary of Prospect.

Ferguson has since apologised for the outburst but that apology has fallen on deaf ears.

“We hope there’s a meaningful punishment,” Leighton added. “This is a huge topic and it isn’t going to go away on this partial apology. I’d be very disappointed if the FA duck the issue.

“Should that happen, we would want to talk to them about tightening the punishment system in future.”

As you can see, it turns out, the job of the referee stretches far beyond anything we had imagined. On top of their match day duties, it also the role of the referees to undermine the FA and seek punishments they deem suitable whilst also acting as advisors to the FA on how to do their job.

If the referees want respect, they have to start showing it. That means holding their hands up when they make mistakes; remaining consistent in their refereeing decisions and above all, respecting the decisions made by footballs governing body.

There is a pecking order in football and as much as they hate to admit it, referees are not at the top!