This article is taken from the July 2023 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

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Here are two cast-iron predictions for next season’s Premiership: that many words will be said about the need for players and managers to treat officials better, and that precious little will actually be done about it.

The problem is not new, of course. It wasn’t even new 23 years ago when a brilliant and infamous photo was taken at Old Trafford: the referee Andy D’Urso swaying in a hurricane of hatred as five Manchester United players gathered around him like hyenas. All the photo (below) lacked was a David Attenborough voiceover. If D’Urso had been playing for Middlesbrough (United’s opponents that night) his teammates would have been over in a flash to defend him. But the referee stands alone, and few seem prepared to come to his aid.

Indeed, things appear to be getting worse. Across all four professional leagues this past season, a record number of cards were issued for dissent. Just in the Premiership, Aleksandar Mitrović was banned for eight games after pushing referee Chris Kavanagh; Bruno Fernandes was lucky to escape sanction after appearing to do the same to assistant referee Adam Nunn; and many blamed Andy Robertson for his part in a contretemps with Constantine Hatzidakis. Nor are managers immune: Brighton’s boss, Roberto De Zerbi, was shown two red cards and four yellows, a worse disciplinary record than any player bar one.

The effects of this behaviour aren’t just confined to match days

The effects of this behaviour aren’t just confined to match days: they filter down to every rung of the game. Almost every lower league referee has hair-raising tales of being threatened, and even young children ape the behaviour of the men they see on TV week in week out. They wear their socks high over their knees, raise their hands before taking corners, cross themselves before coming onto the pitch (irrespective of their own religion) — and, yes, abuse officials, often backed up by their parents on the touchline. 

Better behaviour at Premiership level wouldn’t eradicate this overnight, but it would be a good start. And the FA doesn’t have to go far to make a difference: only ten miles, in fact, the distance from Wembley to Twickenham. 

Perhaps understandably, football seems reluctant to learn from rugby: football is a vastly more popular and lucrative sport, and rugby has more than its fair share of administrative, financial and medical problems right now. But in this particular area, respect for the arbiter, rugby unquestionably has things right. The old cliché that rugby is a hooligans’ game played by gentlemen and football the opposite may be snobbish, but it’s not entirely inaccurate.

Here are five measures which football should consider adopting or modifying from rugby:

• Only the captain can talk to the referee unless the referee speaks to a player first. (A designated outfield player could be nominated when the captain is the goalkeeper.) 
• Every instance of dissent punishable by a yellow card and the free kick being moved 10 metres nearer the offending side’s goal.
• Referees to wear bodycams and microphones, and their conversations with both players and fellow match officials to be broadcast. This would encourage transparency in the decision-making processes, and oblige players to rein in their behaviour. 
• Managers and assistant coaches to be moved from pitchside to rooms higher in the stands (where they would in fact get a better view of the match). Rugby coaches do this as a matter of course, certainly at international level, and communicate by radio with support staff on the touchline who manage substitutions and relay tactical instructions. The managerial gameday role has become partially performative: West Ham boss David Moyes has spoken of media demands for “a new type of manager they wanted to see — the emotion, the action, the manager getting angry or celebrating or kicking bottles”. Managers are now in some ways conduits between the crowd and the officials, personifying and amplifying grievances. 
• Responsibility for timekeeping removed from the referee. He has more than enough to do as it is, and another official taking charge of the game clock will reduce the pressure on the referee to keep track of delays and added time at the end of the match. 

To these should be added better use of VAR, which remains unsatisfactory for at least two reasons. First, the decision whether or not to use it in certain circumstances can itself be flawed, particularly when assessing if a hitherto unseen infringement in build-up play materially affected a goal. Second, sometimes even repeated slow motion multi-angle replays of an incident can’t prove beyond doubt whether or not, for example, a tackle is a foul. A ball crossing a line is objective: a question of contact involving two or more players and a ball all moving at speed is often subjective.

None of these measures would dent the passion and excitement which makes Premiership matches so popular not just in this country but across the world. But the culture needs to change. Every time a massive rugby player meekly accepts the ruling of a referee half his size, a positive culture is reinforced: every time a Premiership footballer tells a referee to go and do something anatomically impossible, the reverse is true. 

Yes, this is professional sport and livelihoods are at stake, but so too are basic human values of respect, understanding and forgiveness. “What we have to accept is that referees are going to make mistakes,” says Accrington Stanley manager John Coleman. “And they don’t make anything like as many as we players and managers do.”