I'm too busy at weekends.

Me too now. I'm going to be washing my hair. Even though I haven't got any.

I think you all make good points - I reached the point today where I knew I had to escalate it, dish out some cards and write up reports or think, sod it I can't be bothered. When you reach that point, it's time to stop.

That's easier to say than to do. I've been at U16 games in the past where the ref has been chased from the pitch by "fans"/coaches/players of one side. I've also seen U16 games where the ref has been in his changing room with players of 1 team attempting to break down the door, fortunately he managed to leg it to his car.

It all stems from an incredibly aggressive and intimidating atmosphere that is allowed to develop at some clubs and which is never adequately challenged and punished by BARLA.

On the VT we often talk about how we expand the player pool that we can pick from. Getting rid of the ridiculous, backward, pathetic scenes like these at all levels of the amateur game is the best way we could "expand" rugby league.

Referee's should get rid of any idiots shouting foul and abusive language on the touchline, especially coaches. If it's the parents, then tell the coaches to sort them or else you'll abandon the game. Be strong with your words and strong with your actions.

If a referee feels it necessary to run away from a bunch of spotty school kids who probably haven't even started shaving yet then he really ought to find a more suitable hobby.

I would suggest curtain making, knitting or gardening.

I agree. It then needs to be followed with strong punishment from BARLA.

had two games called off this year due to abusive parents, this is first year i have taken a team and i was shocked how bad parents are, and i have found the coaches and touchline managers just as bad

lets not tarnish all parents,coaches and clubs with the same brush,the majority of parents are pretty good and well behaved.i coach at u11s and most games pass with no trouble at all however certain fixtures at certain clubs you just no that their will be tension and most often trouble,imo these clubs have been aloud to get away with it for far too long and thats not down to referee`s its higher up the chain who dont back up their officials with effty fines and bans.

refereeing is an awful job which the most of us wouldnt even entertain doing and they are prone to making errors the same has the players are,i take my hat off to them has they do a job which makes sure we have a game to watch in the first place.

You never fail to crack me up

Well said but something has do be done about the minority who are causing this trouble. At the end of the day if a random person who had never watched Rugby in their life saw this game today they wouldn't be watching the sport again

If it's a minority it's a significant and vocal minority, and it's present at an awful lot of clubs.

True. It will only get sorted when the governing bodies become stricter and start fines. Maybe even move parents further away from the pitch so it will minimise it but it still doesn't get rid of the problem

back in my under 15s days i was once getting so much abuse from the opposition coach i ended up having a punch up with him. sufffice to say he wasnt so vocal or aggressive once he had been owned by a 15 year old in front of 50 people.

And then your alarm clock went off right?

no actually. now stop being a blert bazza.

Maybe you are right.

Perhaps there was a spate of U15's and their parents verbally abusing match officials in the TW2 area of South West London a few years ago.

I reffed an U16s tournament yesterday. The vast majority of players and adults were perfectly behaved. There was one parent of one team, however, who decided to barrack from the touchline. The RFL guy running the comp went over and had some words, and he shut up after a couple of games. If he hadn't, I would have refused to referee any more of his team's games until he removed himself from the vicinity. The key, I've found, is not to get angry or distressed, but to simply hit the "calm and dispassionate" button. In that regard, I guess being a teacher is helpful, because the behaviour is quite similar to that you might get from an unreasonable kid in a classroom. In the past, I have sent spectators off, by halting play until they put themselves in the clubhouse out of earshot. However, it should never get to that. It is absolutely the responsibility of the management of the team in question to control their own "supporters". I'll be coaching this summer in the RLC, and if any of our fans/followers start abusing the ref, it'll be me who tells them to can it.

I ended up doing 18 10-minute games, so I was a bit knackered at the end, and most coaches and players came over and thanked me and the other ref after the final. There are some nutters who set pretty poor examples to kids, but they are a minority, at least in London and the south-east.

Sadly it seems to be a "heartlands" issue, at least in my experience anyway.

With all due respect Roy from what I've witnessed school teachers are amongst the least likely people to be able to control any incidents of dissent/public order/disorderly conduct.

Most teachers I know (and sadly I know a few) have little or no interpersonal skills and their idea of 'controlling' a situation is just to shout a lot, have a little tanty and send the kid (or kids) to the headmaster.

Teachers are an unfortunate breed. They have never really left school... or certainly never left that type of environment. Give them a situation that doesnt involve berating a small child or writing stuff on a whiteboard and they are stumped.

To be fair, I think most teachers coming across you, either in or out of the classroom, would recognise you as an attention-seeking cretin and treat you in a special way. So you probably shouldn't generalise from your own experience. I'll explain "generalise" for you, if you like. Or "cretin".

Now don't try to answer my posts again. I'm one of the grown-ups here. Go back to being bullied by the other kids while I make a brew in the staffroom.

Not defending phipps who seems a total kn*b but please don't throw cretin in as an insult.As a teacher you obviously know that its a medical condition caused by an undiagnosed lack of thyroxin at birth.I.e cretinism and is not a very p.c. insult! rant over ta.

Happy to oblige. Is "moron" sufficiently unoffensively offensive ?

Just going on to the serious aspect and the issues Tim2 has alluded to.

Its all good and well sending the parents off or to a suitable distance away, I have done that many a time only to be confronted when we get to the changing rooms for said person to have a second go at me, report goes in and the model nowadays is for whenever a coach, spectator or any playing staff get dismissed is for the rest of the club including people who probably weren't at the game to write letters in saying this, that and the other didn't happen and the punishments don't match what happened as its basically 1 report vs many. Now this is just on a minority of cases but a significant minority and im sick of seeing my colleagues dragged through this. Its not usually the players who are the issue so the humourous post about running from spotty schoolboys is a bit off the mark, it's usually the parents who are bigger than us.

Also from a development point of view, if senior officials like me and Tim2 (polite term for old gits) are getting fed up of behaviour standands, how can you expect us to blood new junior officials into the game into the swearing and personal abuse. This leads into the threads on here about the quality of officials not being good enough maybe there are some excellent officials out there but they are discouraged from taking the course and going down the route from what they see us go through. I have to remind them it gets easier the higher you go, when you get to Championship level it just becomes noise and its not personal most the time, it comes with the uniform. Unfortunately if you don't have the numbers, you don't get the strength.

Also because we don't have the strength or organisation the junior game suffers in terms of match official, I was just speaking to one of my colleagues who is off to Australia for studying and everything from U15s above is like Championship level here, they have a ref, two tjs who have communications kit (which works) and a timekeeper / scorekeeper. You look at our U15s games and its some poor old soul by himself

One of my kids plays RU. I have honestly not heard a single negative comment to the referee or the opposing team while watching. Same with junior cricket. We didn't have any letters to parents about the expected behaviour, or code of conduct to sign, or anything like that - it just happens.

Local kids soccer is pretty much the same, although I do know of a couple of kids who were banned due to parents behavior and they do get people to sign agreements about not shouting at either players or officials.

Massive contrast to what I remember from playing kids RL. There were certain teams even at u-11 where you just turned up expecting a punch-up on and off the pitch.