Fat UK Refs

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Soldato
Joined
5 Jul 2003
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The quality of refereeing in Premiership is astonishingly poor. I’m sure it is even worse in lower divisions.

My understanding is the premier league refs are salaried at circa £70k per year. If so, how are they all so out of shape? A large portion of the poor decisions seem to come from the ref being out of position.

Surely they should be aspiring to the getting to the same fitness and mobility as the players themselves so they can keep up with play?
 
Referee's in English football has not been good enough for a while, however, it is dire more recently.

I do not think it is down to their fitness.
 
As someone with a casual interest in football the quality of the referring is starting to negatively impact my impression of the sport - last 3 games I've watched across 3 divisions (prem, league one and two) were marked by extremely poor and in one case almost certainly bias referring which ruined my experience.

Granted it certainly isn't something that is easy to do, far from it, but the quality seems to be on a decline in general.
 
Without wanting to go full Henry Winter, the standard of officials is linked to the number of officials available and incidents like in the Real - Juve game will only make that worse. Until the FA encourage and protect officials more then the numbers will drop further and as will the quality.
 
Yeah that kind of links to another thread on here about the general conduct of spectators at games - the amount of abuse the refs were getting was pretty insane at the last two games. I was really embarrassed to be the same species as some of the crowd.

That said a lot of the abuse could have been avoided - the last game I watched admittedly I preferred one team over the other, while the other two I had no attachments to either team, but the ref was completely ignoring blatant lack of professionalism, cheating and while not really something the ref could deal with entirely poor sportsmanship in general on the part of one team, while giving red cards for extremely trivial incidents to the other team while atleast twice obstructing play for one team by not seemingly being aware of what was going on - I was unsurprised by the end of the match the verbal abuse he was getting and unfortunately a couple of bottles were thrown at him.

All in all as someone whose interest in football is fairly passing it puts me off taking a more active interest in the game.
 
Refs do a generally decent job in a high pressure, extremely fast moving environment where they are expected to see every little thing. The situation is further exacerbated by players who, rather than being honest and assist the ref, attempt to con him every moment of the game. Further add to this (understandably) partisan fans who will call for everything, managers who will call for everything and then dogs abuse to top it all off.

Until players play fair, managers call it fair and fans don't call for everything then mistakes are almost inevitable.

If you want nigh on perfection then be ready to accept 3 hour long NFL style matches with constant stoppages, reviews and a generally tedious experience.

In the current setup mistakes are and will remain a permanent part of the game.


As an aside to what someone mentioned, pipeline, we will never have that in the UK. You're expected to start at the bottom as a ref and the grief they get is appaling. They get abused verbally, threatened regularly with physical violence and intimidated most games by "fans" and they have zero protection. Until we (the Brits) impart a bit of decency and treat them even if not with respect bit like human beings you will never get people wanting to come through. They then hit the top and get abuse on a national scale?! It's a mugs game.

The FA should stop paying lip service to respect and make it so, red card instantly if you lip off to the ref. Give it one or two weeks it will stop, over time the respect (that sadly is enforced because most footballers seemingly have no decency) will filter down and you will get more refs coming through, better standard etc etc etc.

TLDR; **** refs? Blame the players and the fans first.
 
i wouldn't fancy being one tbh was watching a game yesterday and thought the ref was a bit tubby, reading online earlier first time in 80 years no uk refs will be at the world cup in russia.
 
No1newts said:
If you want nigh on perfection then be ready to accept 3 hour long NFL style matches with constant stoppages, reviews and a generally tedious experience.
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I'd tolerate some delay whilst incidents are reviewed if it lead to a reduction in the blatant attempts to get an opponent sent off which seems to have crept in lately.
 
I don’t think most refs would make terrible decisions if they were able to actually see what they are called to judge I.e with better positioning they would see more and make better calls. This relies entirely on mobility- there is no excuse for refs and assistants who are not lean and rapid.

The alternative is video replays or more refs on the pitch to offer better judgement, both of which are in the NFL.

I have no problem with NFL style replays - the pauses in NFL aren’t because of refs reviewing plays. The pauses are from team line up changes, advertising breaks and resetting downs. The review system is really quick
 
Raggs said:
i wouldn't fancy being one tbh was watching a game yesterday and thought the ref was a bit tubby, reading online earlier first time in 80 years no uk refs will be at the world cup in russia.
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That's because the ref that we were sending left the job.
 
Football: A gentleman's game played by hooligans
Rugby: A Hooligans game played by Gentlemen..

Ok a slight exaggeration but you won't get spoken to as a rugby ref like you do in football

They need to start coming down on bad sportsmanship in football
 
Rroff said:
You may be right but regardless of the reasoning it doesn't give a good impression of the sport outwardly.
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I agree but it needs more than a "refs are fat ***** who ruin the game" approach and instead an acknowledgement that all parties need to work together to fix it.
 
£70k?? Sounds a lot until you realise that is the pinnacle of your career, you become almost a minor celebrity with all the faff that comes along with that, combined with the fact some idiots would send death threats if you get a decision wrong... I'll pass thanks

*Also if I was a ref I would end up sending so many players off for diving, attitude etc etc :)
 
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