‘I’ve had knives pulled on me. I’ve had death threats… and it’s getting WORSE’: Grassroots referees share their harrowing experiences as Mail Sport launches campaign to stop the abuse
- Mail Sport has launched a campaign to help stamp out abuse of match officials
- Two referees revealed how abuse led to them walking away from officiating
- Have you witnessed abuse of referees? Contact [email protected]
Two young referees have revealed the extent of the abuse that forced them to walk away from officiating in interviews for Mail Sport’s It’s All Kicking Off podcast.
Rhys Baldwin took the decision to quit refereeing in April after 11 years. The 25-year-old shockingly explained how he had knives pulled on him and his car keyed in response to refereeing decisions he made in matches.
Baldwin told Mail Sport’s Football Editor Ian Ladyman that he believes behaviour of players and coaches has increasingly worsened as they replicate the actions of Premier League stars. He believes rules need to be strengthened at the top level to help improve behaviour in the grassroots game.
Former referee George Sleigh believes behaviours must change at the top but also at the bottom, where he feels young kids should be taught the importance of respecting referees. Sleigh quit refereeing shortly after he received a broken jaw from a player he had sent off in a five-a-side match.
As Mail Sport launches a campaign to stamp out the abuse of referees at all levels, IAKO explored the stories of two of the 10,000 referees who have left the game in the last five years.
Mail Sport has heard stories from grassroots officials about the abuse they receive, and Premier League players are also showing dissent towards referees regularly
Grassroots referees spoke to Ian Ladyman on the It’s All Kicking Off podcast about the issue
Mail Sport has launched a campaign to stop the abuse of referees to help boost the game
Ian Ladyman: Rhys, thank you for joining us mate. Let’s start by talking a little bit about your refereeing history, how long you were a referee for, what age groups and kind of what level you reached.
Rhys Baldwin: Yeah, so I started refereeing at the age of 14, that was 11 years ago. So this would be my 12th season had I not quit. I refereed anything from under nines with Newport County academy up to senior football.
I did that until technically until a couple of weeks ago, but I officially retired in April after a cup final. I thought that would be a great way to end my career, because I had a lot of abuse in the semi-final and that was when I kind of gave it up. But with the final being offered to me I thought I’ll take the final, do that and then I can move on and I can retire.
I was asked to cover a game a couple weeks ago just as a favour to a friend of mine and I did that and it confirmed everything that I made the right decision.
Ladyman: Yeah, go on, just explain that. When you say it confirmed that you’d made the right decision, what do you mean?
Baldwin: Well, I ended up having to go to a hearing about that game. I was accused of racism during the game because I sent off the manager of the team who was black. He accused me of sending him off purely because of the colour of his skin and not because of what he had called me during the match.
Ladyman: And why did you send him off? What did he call you if you are able to say?
Baldwin: He called me a cheating and then there was another word after that but I won’t say that word on here.
Ladyman: Yeah. So how old are you, Rhys?
Baldwin: I’m 25.
Ladyman: So what on earth causes a 25 year old man not even at the peak of his career to quit refereeing?
Abuse towards referees has worsened in recent years, both in the Premier League and further down the football pyramid
Baldwin: Honestly, the amount of abuse is insane. I have so many stories of abuse. ‘I’ve had knives pulled on me, I’ve had people try and get me fired from my job, I’ve had my car keyed. I’ve been stopped on the street and screamed at for a good 15 minutes in front of all my friends. That was when I was 16, I had that happen.
The one decision that made me quit was a semi-final. A boy handballed on the line to stop his team losing the game, which I think anybody in their right mind would do to try and win your team the game. Unfortunately that meant it was a red card and the team scored the subsequent penalty and won 2-1.
His dad came onto the field after the full-time whistle, threatening to beat me up, told me he was going to kill me and said if there wasn’t enough witnesses around I’d already be dead.
When he said that to me I thought, ‘right, okay, you said that in front of the vice-chairman of the league, you said that in front of me, and you said that in front of the coach of the opposition’, and I thought, ‘I think this is time for me to hang my whistle up’.
I was 24 then and turned 25 in the summer. I’d lost love of refereeing years before and I just kind of did it for the money for a little while, but the money isn’t even worth it to be honest.
Ladyman: What age group of games was that one you just talked about?
Baldwin: Under 12s. 11 year old kids, year seven.
Ladyman: Wow. Right, so you’re being threatened, essentially, with the most extreme forms of violence for making what seemed to be a clear decision against a 12 year old boy.
Baldwin: Yeah. I understand nobody wants to give under 12 red cards. I fully understand that, and I don’t want to be doing that either. You know, at the end of the day, they’re kids, they’re going to make mistakes. But at the end of the day, the decision had to be made.
I was in front of the chairman of the league, vice-chairman of the league, fixture secretary. All the league panels were at the semi-finals, so if I don’t give a red card there I’m going to be brought up in front of County FA, in front of the league.
I’m not risking my refereeing career at the time to save a 12 year old boy from crying, you know. I understand he’s going to be upset, I understand his parents are going to be upset, but there is nothing I can do about it.
Ladyman: What happened to the guy who threatened you?
Baldwin: I reported it to the FA, I reported it to the club and the club said they were going to deal with it internally but I actually don’t know what happened to him.
I’ve never actually been told officially. I’ve been unofficially told but I’ve not been officially told what happened to him. Unofficially I heard he was banned for this season but I don’t know if that’s true.
Ladyman: Did you ever receive an apology from him or from his club or from anybody?
Baldwin: No, nothing, no.
Mauricio Pochettino (centre) admitted he was wrong to react angrily at officials at the end of Chelsea’s eight-goal thriller against Manchester City at Stamford Bridge earlier this month
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Ladyman: So, I presume you, like most referees, if not all referees, you started refereeing for the love of the game because you love football. Was this type of behaviour immediately apparent to you back in the day or has it got significantly worse over time?
Baldwin: I mean, it’s always been there. There’s always been, you know, the back chatty player, the player who does a bad tackle every game, the gobby boy or gobby girl sometimes. But the behaviour has gotten worse.
I stopped doing senior football in 2019, that’s when I stopped doing adults. And then I stopped doing kids this year.
I went away for Christmas in 2021 and and when I left for Christmas, I had given one red card from August to December. I came back in the January, and from January to April, I gave out 22 red cards. Because the behaviour and the discipline and the language from everybody was so much worse.
Ladyman: Kids, right. Wow, wow. And how much of this is coming from the sidelines? How much is coming from coaches and managers and sadly parents?
Baldwin: When I started refereeing, so when I was 15, I was really getting into the swing of things, I would say 80% of it came from the sidelines. I would say now it’s 50-50, maybe 60-40 at a push.
I’d say a lot of the players are getting a lot worse. The players on the field are worse than I’ve ever seen before. And the coaches on the sideline are worse than I’ve ever seen before. It’s horrendous.
Ladyman: So from the players you’re talking about, general backchat, abusive language, I presume.
Baldwin: Yeah, mostly that, yeah, but it’s not just that. A lot of kids are very clever with what they do. They’ll make a homophobic remark or a racist remark, but they won’t do it in such a way for me to fully notice it or for me to be able to do everything on the field.
Because obviously as a referee, when I’m doing it, I’m on my own. I don’t have assistance, I don’t have VAR. I’ve got nothing, I’ve got two eyes and two ears and that’s it. I’m focusing on 22 players on the pitch, three coaches on each sideline, and about five subs on each side then. So I’m focusing on about 40 people.
I can’t focus on one thing every single time. And they’re very clever with what they do. They say a lot of things and they do a lot of things.
Ladyman: Did you say earlier that you’ve been threatened with a knife?
Baldwin: Yes, on two occasions.
Ladyman: Can you just tell me a little bit about that, about those?
Baldwin: The one that I vividly remember was a couple years ago I was refereeing a six-a-side tournament. It was for men who wanted to lose weight and it was a charity kind of thing. In six-a-side you’re not allowed to go into the D, into the penalty area, because it’s a penalty. So Team A went into the box, Team B got the penalty, no problem at all. Team B went into the box and Team A got a penalty.
The Team A captain ran up to me screaming my face, called me a bunch of names, so I gave him a red card because of what he said. He went off the pitch, went into his bag, pulled out one of the Stanley box cutter knives, pulled one of those out and stormed onto the pitch with one of those and was walking towards me.
His own team mates basically rugby tackled him to the floor and pinned and pulled him outside the gate. I locked the gate and I said ‘I’m not leaving until this guy is dealt with’.
I spoke to the guy in charge and he asked me not to call the police and foolishly I agreed. He said ‘oh you’ll get an apology next week’. I turned up the following week, didn’t get an apology and he threatened to knock my head off. I dropped the cards on the floor and walked off. I never went back.
Baldwin admits growing up he would have treated a referee the same way as Sir Alex Ferguson
Ladyman: I presume that these, I mean that is truly shocking. I’m amazed that you didn’t quit refereeing there and then. And I’m also amazed you didn’t call the police. But I presume stories like this are commonplace within the refereeing community. Obviously it can’t just be you.
Baldwin: It’s not just me, no. I know of many referees who have been attacked, people who’ve had worse than me. I know people who have actually been assaulted on the field because of what they’ve done with fists and I know a referee who got smacked with an umbrella once and split his head open.
Ladyman: Getting to the meat of the issue, Rhys, I mean, these are extraordinary stories that you are telling me. I think everybody who’s listening to this podcast will be doing so with their mouths hanging open by now. I think we all knew that referees had to put up with a lot, but this is criminal behavior that you’re talking about.
What I want to ask you is, what do you feel when you watch professional football on the television, or I don’t know whether you go to live football, but when you watch professional football and you see the biggest managers in our game, the biggest players in our game, behaving the way they do towards match officials.
Baldwin: I think it’s horrendous, kids look up to these guys. I know when I was a kid I looked up to the players who were on the team I supported and to the biggest managers like when I was a kid. Fergie, Mourinho and Wenger were the big three. And I looked up to them as when I was a kid and I would have treated the referee the same way on the field if I played football.
Mikel Arteta come out the other week after that Newcastle game, that VAR fiasco game. And the comments he made, I’m just thinking, the referees are still human at the end of the day, they’re gonna make mistakes. You’re not gonna get every single decision right on the field. It’s impossible. Any referee who ever says, I’ve never made a mistake, is a liar because they’re human, they make mistakes. It happens.
I just think it’s disgusting and the players and the coaches at that level get away with it because of who they are and how much money they make. And that’s what I don’t like.
Ladyman: I mean it’s easy for people like myself in the media to make what some people might describe as a lazy connection between what happens up there at the top of the game and what happens further down the pyramid but it seems to me as though that connection is real from what you’re saying.
Baldwin: It is. I actually believe that the abuse the referees get at my level, the lowest level, is worse than the Prem. Now, not on the scale, because obviously with the Premier League you have social media, you have millions of fans berating you, sending you stupid messages and all that kind of stuff, which sucks. It does, it’s horrendous. But at my level, with the referees around me, you referee where you live.
So like, for example, if in the Premier League, you could live in Yorkshire and referee a game in Bournemouth, you might never see the fans of that team ever again.
Whereas for me, I referee two teams that are local to me. I’m probably going to serve one of them at work, if I worked in a supermarket or you’re a mechanic or whatever, you might serve them. If I’m a school, I work in school, I’m a TA [teaching assistant] at schools. I see kids I’ve refereed on a daily basis.
Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta hit out at officials following Newcastle’s controversial winning goal
So you constantly see the people you referee and you’re constantly abused, yelled at, screamed at, talked to like you’re nothing because of a game or a singular decision in a game. I genuinely believe that for us down at this level the actual abuse is worse because we have to deal with it within our daily lives, within our work, within our leisure, within everything like that,
They get more of it, more people, but it’s on social media. You can ignore social media if you choose to. That’s my opinion on it.
Ladyman: So what needs to happen, Reece? I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but what I will say is that what I think, I know Chris [Sutton] echoes this view, what I think is that the punishments at the top level need to be harder and need to be more common. There has not been a red card issued in the Premier League for dissent, I mean a straight red card, for 11 years. For 11 years. I think punishments need to be harder for players and managers and they need to be more common. But it matters really today what you think should happen to change it.
Baldwin: Yeah, I mean, so actually, if you look at the laws of the game, dissent is actually only a yellow card. Red cards are…
Ladyman: Although, just to interrupt you, am I not right in thinking that foul and abusive languages are red?
Baldwin: You found offensive, insulting or abusive language is a red card, but dissent is a yellow and they’re two different things, which I don’t think is right.
If I went up to you and I said to you, ‘oh, you’re being an idiot’ or something like that, I’m not going to swear on the podcast, but stuff like that, that’s dissent. If I called you a cheating, something like that else, that’s found abusive language or offensive, insulting or abusive language. So there’s a slight difference, but at the end of the day it still all could be taken as offensive language.
It should just be a straight red card, in my opinion. That’s something for IFAB to look at in the future, though. I think the referees in the Premier League, if you have a group of players surrounding you, look at rugby, for example. I play rugby, if I went up to the referee that I had yesterday and went to him, ‘you’re an effing idiot’, I’m gonna get red carded, and I’m going to be banned for five weeks, just for that. I’m being banned for five weeks.
West Ham’s Lucas Paqueta has picked up three yellow cards this season for dissent
Baldwin: If a player comes up to a referee in the Premier League and says that, ‘go away, go away, go away’. And that’s all it is. Referees in the Premier League need to be stronger, they need to give red cards and things like that, they need to give yellow cards to people constantly coming up and bombarding them with information. That’s what needs to happen.
I think football should take a slight leaf out of rugby’s playbook. Only captains can speak to the ref and coaches. I think the punishments need to be harsher. I think that they need to actually punish the teams and punish the players.
Ladyman: And if you thought that managers in particular behaved better, do you think that would then drip down to the players? And do you think that would then slowly drip down the pyramid to the lower reaches of the game that you worked at? Is it that simple?
Baldwin: Nothing simple. Manager behaviour, it’s a hard one to say because when you’re professional footballer, say Erling Haaland and you’re earning, five million pounds a month or whatever he earns, are you really going to care what your manager does in the media? You’re going to do your job and if you want to be an idiot on the pitch and say things to the referee, you’re going to do it.
It’s the players that need to change on the field because the players are who the kids look up to. Kids don’t really look up to managers as much.
They may do a little bit like with Pep [Guardiola] but they will look up to players a lot more. And I think if the player’s behaviour changes, that will slowly drip down the pyramid and it will definitely filter into the younger kids we’re coming through now.
If this season, say, you had all the players getting sent off for dissent, then the kids under 10s and under 11s are like, ‘alright, okay, I can’t do that’. And when they go through, they get to under 16s, youths and under 18s and under 21s, they’re not gonna be as abusive because they know, ‘oh, Erling Haaland got sent off for that three weeks ago. I’m not doing that’.
Lee Cattermole was the last Premier League player to be sent off for swearing at an official
Ladyman: Yeah. When you watch professional football, it must make you, I don’t know, frustrated, sad, angry. I don’t know what it makes you.
Baldwin: It makes me extremely frustrated especially when I know VAR isn’t perfect, it’s taking a lot longer than it needs to but the referees are there trying to make the right decision. You can complain, ‘oh his nose hair is offside’, we all hate that but at the end of the day he is offside and that is the law of the game and people complain about that kind of stuff and that’s what frustrates me the most.
Ladyman: Finally, I presume that, well, I’ll ask you, how do you feel now that your refereeing career is over? What’s your overriding emotion?
Baldwin: I get to play rugby now, so it’s a lot more fun. I get to actually play the sports that I want to play. I’ve never felt more relieved. I don’t wake up on a Sunday morning and think, ‘oh my God, I’ve got to go and referee a bunch of under 12s and then get screamed at for 90 minutes on the side of the pitch and then potentially get followed home or whatever’.
So I’m a lot less stressed and I’m enjoying playing sport. I’m enjoying playing rather than being in charge is a lot nicer.
Ladyman: And do you think there’s any way that you’ll ever go back?
Baldwin: I think if you’d asked me a month ago I might have said yes, but after the incident I had this early last month I don’t think so. I actually had a phone call today asking me to do a game and I told them no.
I don’t think there’s much chance of me going back. Maybe when I’m done playing rugby, maybe I’ll go back and maybe give another go in five or ten years time, but I don’t see me picking up another whistle until I’m at least maybe 35, 40.
Ladyman: And do you know other people who’ve quit?
Baldwin: Yeah, loads. I know, I can name off the top of my head at least four people who I’ve refereed who have quit.
Ladyman: Very sad. Mate that’s awful for you and sobering for us to hear but incredible detail from you and I do appreciate that.
Baldwin believes rugby’s approach should be adopted in football to help build respect
While VAR has frustrated fans, the officials have been making decisions in line with the laws
Ladyman: George, thanks for joining us today. If we could just start with a little bit of a potted history of your career in refereeing in terms of when you started, at what age, and at the levels that you officiated at.
Sleigh: Yeah, sure. So I qualified as a ref as soon as I could. It was something that I wanted to do for, you know, growing up. I qualified as a 14-year-old and I did it in about eight for about eight years in total.
The first two years I only did youth football because that’s what you’re allowed to do. And as soon as I turned 16, I started doing open age football, so just completely men’s football, eleven-a-side. From that age onwards I started refereeing about three times a week, that was Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday.
Throughout the years I got my promotions seven, six, five and then at university I did my promotion to level four as well. I was in the academy for referees as well.
I was quite experienced for someone of my age group and then I gave it up after my eighth season. It was an accumulation of things, I was leaving university at the time and I wanted my weekends back as well, but there were certainly a few other things that made me want to stop doing it as well.
Ladyman: You clearly had a real passion for it. You say you actually wanted to do it when you were growing up and you obviously jumped into it as soon as you could. You clearly felt a real belief and had a real depth of feeling about refereeing.
Sleigh: Yeah, it was definitely something that I wanted to do. That’s why I jumped, like you say, I jumped straight into it when I could. It was a good job to have as a teenager and then it was something that I felt I got kind of alright at doing. I enjoyed going through the promotions and enjoyed improving and just kept with it all the way through for eight seasons.
Ladyman: So let’s get to the very heart of it then. Why did you stop? Apart from the fact that you were coming out of university, why did you stop?
Sleigh: There was a few accumulation of things, but the general sort of abuse that referees get each week was one thing. But a main thing that happened for me was that I got physically assaulted at one point. This was in university, so this was towards the end of my sort of refereeing years.
Like a lot of referees, I started doing five-a-side as well. And I’d been doing that for years as well, so I was used to it. But I’d abandoned the game for the amount of abuse that I was getting as a ref. And then out of nowhere, with no warning, I got physically assaulted and ended up with a broken jaw.
I had to have the surgery to get it repaired. The guy got a prison sentence suspended. So after that, I just lost a lot of love for it, really.
Ladyman: As I can imagine you would do. That’s a shocking story. Could you just, if possible, and if you don’t mind, just tell me a little bit more of the details. So you abandoned the game because of the level of grief you were getting. What age group were we talking about?
Jurgen Klopp argues angrily with officials during Liverpool’s 4-3 win over Spurs last season
Sleigh: This is just men’s five-side football. Yeah, so all of this really was just because I was just reffing a five-side game where you’re supposed to turn up and have fun. That’s the whole point of it. You turn up and have fun, to have a kick about, and it’s ended up in all this.
In terms of the game itself, then I just remember reffing it, just normal, casually. One team absolutely fine, the other team weren’t interested in playing. They just wanted to fight and be aggressive.
And I remember one of the other team said to me at one point, ‘ref, you don’t even have to take this, I can just, you know, just call it’. I sent this player off for abuse at the time and he was standing outside the cage. I didn’t really hear much from him for the rest of the game.
I abandoned the game because I was just getting too much abuse. I knew I was referring to an alright standard and was used to five-a-side, so I knew where the line was and there was nothing I hadn’t seen before. So, I abandoned the game and then the fellow I’d sent off just walked up to me and just sort of assaulted me. He punched in the jaw with just absolutely no warning at all. All of this was over a five-a-side game. So it’s just ridiculous really.
Ladyman: Just tell me a little bit about the operation George, how long did it last and what exactly happened?
Sleigh: So went to hospital and then was there for about three or four days. That’s a have jaw surgery and put some metal plates in. It was like a six to eight week recovery after that. And then when I could get out and ref again, I did started reffing again after that.
Ladyman: You must have really loved it to go back even for a while after that.
Sleigh: I’ve put a lot into it over the few years, getting into academies for it and you know, pretty consistently reffing. So I put in a lot of time for it, so I didn’t just want to give it up overnight.
Ladyman: And you mentioned that the chap who assaulted you received a suspended prison sentence. Did you ever hear from him again an apology or did he reach out to you or anybody from his team reach out to you?
Sleigh: No, no, nothing like that, no. Never heard back from him, no. Didn’t want to really either.
Ex-Fulham star Aleksandar Mitrovic was sent off for shoving referee Chris Kavanagh in March
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Ladyman: And I presume that’s the last football game you ever refereed, is it?
Sleigh: No, I still wanted to ref and I was still at university. It was still a good job for me and I still enjoyed it so once I could go out on the pitch again. But that was my last season. The accumulation of things, I wanted my weekends back after uni and stuff, but after that and then getting the same old abuse on Saturdays and Sundays and all that, I just thought no, it’s not for me anymore.
Ladyman: The level of abuse that you got generally speaking, was that particularly from players? Was it from managers and coaches? Was it from parents? What was the balance of that?
Sleigh: I would say it’s pretty even between a cut between all three of them. When you’re a when you’re refereeing youth football the abuse comes mostly from parents sometimes managers but probably parents more when you’re doing youth football and that’s something I think a lot of young referees will tell you.
The worst bit is the parents there and then when you get to open-age football, I think it’s a fair split. You prepare a game and you know that before you go in this manager is hard to deal with or they’ve got this player that’s hard to deal with or their crowd are known for this. So it’s a fair split between them really.
Ladyman: Did you notice that getting worse over time in the years that you did it?
George: I’m not sure about worse over time. I think it’s just been pretty consistent. I don’t think it’s changed or gone up or down, but certainly hasn’t improved.
Ladyman: Right, it has always been bad. After a game had finished and emotions had kind of settled down and tempers had calmed down, did you often get apologies from players or coaches or parents or from representatives from teams or clubs or did they just clearly see you as fair game?
Sleigh: Maybe once in a blue moon, you’d get a player come up to you after a game and go ‘all right fair enough sorry about that’, but it wasn’t a frequent thing and let alone clubs. Definitely not in my experience anyway, and nothing too major but after the game everyone seems to sort of switch off a bit. If you know the teams well enough if you’ve reffed them enough times, you can sort of just smile it off anyway, and you’re back to how you are in the changing rooms really, no matter what’s happened.
Ladyman: But that in itself is so wrong is it not? That you are the one person on that field who is not there for the glory, who is not there for the cool points. You’re the bloke who’s there to make sure the game can take place at all. And at the end of it you’re the one who’s having to, to use your words, smile it off and just accept it. And that’s just very wrong is it not?
Sleigh: Yeah, I mean when I was refereeing games, I couldn’t care less who won. I just wanted the correct decision each time, that was all I wanted. I couldn’t care less who won. When players would always say you’re giving them loads of fouls, I’d just say I’ve just called each foul as it was. I couldn’t comprehend that they couldn’t see that I was just there to call each decision as I saw it. And that was how it was, but it was just constant really.
Ladyman: What do you think was driving that culture of abuse, that culture of referees just having to accept that was part of their job? Where is all that coming from?
Sleigh: In my opinion, I think it comes from the culture of the sport right at the bottom age groups. I think you see it with parents at kids football and that then embeds into the young kids as players and it drives all the way through the football pyramid. So in my opinion, to overcome it, you would need to come up with something fairly drastic and have something like a respect football with new rules around the referees, similar to how they have it in rugby with the respect levels there.
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Sleigh: Introduce it maybe at like an under eight level or something like that. And then they bring it with them. Bring in this respect football when they become under nines. Then by the time they reach open age football, maybe that would have changed the culture.
Ladyman: But how can that happen? How can that culture change when every time these kids or these parents or coaches switch on a television and watch a live Premier League game, all the players are at it and all the managers are at it? Surely, well, is the culture not being driven from the top down rather than from the bottom up?
Sleigh: I think it could be both, but there’s no easy fix for it overnight, other than if they were to just change rules completely like that, which I don’t think would make a lot of people happy. You know, drastic changes to the game. But the goal would be, I think, to get the respect level to how it is in rugby. We’ve seen in the academy and stuff, we had rugby refs come in and talk to us about their experiences. So I think the goal would be to get it like that, but I don’t think there’s any way to fix it overnight whether it comes from the top or bottom.
Ladyman: And how do you feel when you see, I don’t know how much professional football you watch, but how do you feel when you see what we all see pretty much every Saturday and Sunday. The Premier League on the television, on match day, on Sky Super Sunday, the biggest managers in the game, going into the referees and the fourth officials, the biggest players in the game, going into the referees. How does that make you feel?
Sleigh: Well, when I was refereeing, I used to see it as a referee, but now I’m just a fan. So I watch a lot of Premier League every week. And it’s exciting, whether it’s people shouting at the ref or people shouting at each other. You look at Antonio Conte and Thomas Tuchel at the Spurs-Chelsea game last year. I’m just there as a fan, so I’m just there for the entertainment now.
So speaking as a fan, there’s that, but then you speak empathetically towards referees and you just think it’s not acceptable the amount that they have to deal with. Referees at the top level get all sorts of threats and it’s very hard to deal with. So I just don’t think that’s acceptable at all really.
Ladyman: Do you think in your opinion that especially the younger age groups mimic what they see the professionals do, whether that’s dissent or whether it’s waving imaginary yellow cards or it’s diving or it’s whatever, time wasting etc. Do you think, is it as easy to say that what happens at the top is mimicked at the bottom?
Sleigh admits he still enjoys the entertainment caused by some Premier League confrontations
He believes Premier League stars and grassroots players should give the same respect as rugby players
Sleigh: Yeah, I think you can say that what happens at the top is being seen at the bottom. You see a player do a new trick or a celebration, all the kids are going to do it. And you can say the same about the way that referees are treated. But I think you could treat it from both ways. You could treat it from the top down and from the bottom up as well.
Ladyman: Yeah. So you think that it’s an interesting thought that, as well as trying to fix what’s happening at the top end, you kind of get into the kids early when they’re in those formative ages in terms of the way they should behave before it takes hold.
Sleigh: In the same way, you see England have invested in their youth team and youth academies, and now our international team is seeing the benefits of that 10 years later. You could do the same thing and implement these new sort of respect laws or something at the bottom, and then by the time that they come to open age football, we then reap the rewards from a new sort of respect around the game.
Ladyman: And two final things, how’s the jaw now? It looks alright to me.
Sleigh: Yeah, no, it’s all good mate, just a couple of metal plates in there. Yeah, that’s just part of it now. It’s just there. Don’t really notice it, but it’s fine now.
Ladyman: Oh, okay. You say that like it’s a very kind of casual, normal thing. So you’re not so clever going through the airport security scanners then. And finally, seriously, would you ever pick up the whistle again or is it done for good now?
Sleigh: I guess never say never but it’s not really something that I’m thinking about at the moment. I like my weekends, I like watching the Premier League at the weekends at the moment so I’m quite happy with that.
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