Referees must take charge
THE HEAD of the referee’s department at the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) and former FIFA referee Victor Stewart, was a recent guest on the morning sports discussion show ‘Sports Explosion’ on HITZ 92 FM.
It was a long-awaited and highly anticipated interview based to the spiralling narrative about the overly rough and physical play in the nation’s top football league, the Red Stripe Premier League.
When the idea was put to Mr Stewart that the referees are the ones that are best placed to tackle this crippling problem, his response was not very encouraging.
Stewart basically disagreed that the football being played in the league today is necessarily rougher than it was in years gone by. He, instead, went on to lament the poor technical quality of current crop of local players when compared to players of the previous eras, and intimated that was the crux of the problem.
Stewart also pointed fingers at the coaches in the league, saying they should address the problem, not the referees. Try as my co-host and I did during the half an hour discussion, we could not get the referee boss to change his tune, as he insisted that the referees are doing the best that they can under the circumstances.
It was even pointed out to him that the match officials were not obligated nor could they be mandated to consciously curtail the roughness of the league, and that it was more of an appeal to their collective conscience, and their loyalty to the sport, to understand the unique position they find themselves in where they directly manage the flow of the games, with the authority to dictate the tone of play and, by extension, the level of physicality.
If the leadership of the referees’ body is not buying into that thinking, as echoed by Stewart, and act accordingly, then the league will continue to disintegrate.
The coaches most certainly will not tone down the physicality of their teams, because that is what it takes to survive in the league.
Teams like Cavalier and Harbour View that dare to pursue a philosophy of developing and exposing young, technically gifted players, while attempting to play the passing and possession game, will suffer the most.
It is therefore understandable that it was Cavalier’s technical director, Rudolph Speid, who emphatically labelled the league a “butcher league”.
The fight to save and improve the Premier League cannot stop. It is now essentially a selling league where the best local talent is showcased to the wider football world, with the clubs hoping to find the odd gem or two, and bring them to the fore, with a view of getting them sold to top international clubs. Fewer and fewer gems are being discovered, largely because the level of technical play is falling short, due largely to the excessive physicality.
If the sentiments of the referees remain in the selfish and self-centred mode, with reluctance to accept that there is a problem that needs fixing, and they and only they can address this issue directly, then the league and the football product overall will continue to struggle, because gems which they seek, cannot thrive and develop in the ‘butcher conditions’ that exist at the moment.
Between the atrocious surfaces and the butchery that is passing for football, local clubs will simply continue to sell the odd player to Major League Soccer in the USA and the majority to USL, and are now faced with the more complex and convoluted path into the bigger leagues of Europe – unless Mr Stewart and his referees make an about-turn, and understand the predicament the game is in and do what is right by Jamaica’s football.
‘Between the atrocious surfaces and the butchery that is passing for football, local clubs will simply continue to sell the odd player to Major League Soccer in the USA and the majority to USL, and are now faced with the more complex and convoluted path into the bigger leagues of Europe.’