There was a short item in the newspapers just before Christmas, which many football fans may have missed as it didn't appear on the sports pages.
Marlon Beresford, the Luton Town goalkeeper, became the first professional footballer to be convicted of swearing at fans, which happened at their away game at Plymouth. He was found guilty of using threatening, abusive and insulting words and fined £250. Apparently it was only his 'long and illustrious career', that persuaded the magistrates not to give him a banning order. That would have been something wouldn't it, a professional footballer being banned from football grounds on match days.
There was no mention whether the referee also took action, which of course he could have done. Many people still suffer under the misapprehension that a player can only be sent off if he swears at the referee but the law simply says 'a player shall be sent off, if he uses offensive, abusive or insulting language or gestures', so it could be at anyone.
It reminded me of a game I refereed at Didcot Town many years ago. This was at their old ground near the town centre and not their splendid new football centre out near the ring road. On this particular occasion one of the goalkeepers kept swearing loudly and profusely at his team mates. When the ball went out of play I stopped my watch and walked back to him. I asked him to turn around and look behind his goal. 'What do you see?’ I asked him. 'Nothing but a load of kids' he said.
All the young fans used to congregate under this stand away from the adults who stood in front of the club house. 'Exactly,' I said, 'and they have to listen to your bad language.' 'Sorry ref,' he said, 'I didn't realise'. He didn't swear for the rest of the game, which proved my long held belief that most swearing at football matches can be contained if people only think about it.
But do I make too much of bad language on the football pitch? Earlier this season, I refereed at one of those grounds where everyone, teams and referees, not only change but shower together. It was in the shower after my match that one player questioned my efforts to cut out offensive language during the game. 'But surely ref,' he said, 'it's everyday language today.' 'Not in my house it isn't,' I replied. 'Nor in mine,' he hastened to assure me.
I'm sure the majority would give the same answer. 'So why should we accept it on the football field?' I asked him. There had been a reasonable crowd watching the game with a fair sprinkling of women. Why should they be expected, any more than the youngsters at Didcot, to be exposed to offensive
language?
I'm well aware that women also swear but I remember a game I watched on a local park, when the referee admonished a team coach for exhorting his team from the touch line with liberal helpings of the 'f' word. A woman standing close by with a young child, said 'Thank you ref, I thought he would have had more respect for me and my daughter.'
'Imagine,' I said to my questioner in the showers, 'if you had 22 young men outside your house swearing without restraint in front of your family. You would soon be calling for some action against them'. 'That's different,' he contested, 'lots of things happen on the football field that would not be tolerated anywhere else. Think of some of the bad tackles that players make'.
That's an argument however, that doesn't stand up according to another newspaper report I read this month. Barrow defender James Cotterill was jailed for four months for breaking the jaw of striker Sean Rigg in their game against Bristol City.
Dick Sawdon Smith
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© R Sawdon Smith 2007