Referees receive unacceptable abuse

THE aftermath of the incident at the West Ham v Fulham match, when Tomas Soucek was sent off by Mike Dean, illustrate something we hear little about. I will leave the incident itself until next week as I think there is one part of it that has been overlooked.

I will concentrate thisweek on the abuse and death threats sent to Mike Dean’s family.

We hear a lot about players being abused, sometimes by racist comments, not at the grounds because there are no spectators, but after games, mainly through social media.

This is totally unacceptable butwe hear little about the abuse of referees, which has a long history. For some reason it has felt acceptable to abuse referees formany years.

One player in the local Reading League when taken to task by the referee for abuse said, “If you can’t take it you shouldn’t be refereeing”, as if that is something referees have to accept.

Nowwith the advent of social media, the abusers sign up under assumed names and cannot be traced.

One newPremier League referee, when he checked his social media after his first Premier League game, found messages such as “I hope you get killed in a road crash on yourway home”. He doesn’t botherwith social media.

Mark Clattenburg’s familywere threatened and he still receives hate messages, although hewithdrewfrom the Premier League three years ago. These threats are not uncommon.

Michael Oliver awarded an obvious penalty in the last minute against Juventus in the Champions League and after being vilified by their goalkeeper, Gianluigi Buffon, sent him off.

Michael’swife Lucy, who incidentally is a referee herself in theWomen’s Super League, immediately got messages on her Twitter account such as, ‘go do the dishes, wewill kill your husband’ and ‘you have to die’. Theymoved house.

This cannot continue.

The social media companies must devise a methodwhereby their customers can be identified and those using it for abuse and threats must be prosecuted.