AS someone who years ago used to go with my mates on a day trip to the Muratti when it was being held in the colonies – decked out, as we were, with wooden rattles that made a huge racket and red and white rosettes as big as saucepan lids – I suppose that qualifies me as a one-time football fan.

But that, as I said, was years ago and I haven’t been to a match since that time in the Island Games when I donned the flat cap and went to Springfield to see the home team beat the Donkeys.

On that occasion, as I recall, although I could be getting mixed up with a Muratti, the powers that be imported a top ref from England who, unfortunately, didn’t have the sort of sense of humour which I thought was a prerequisite for being the man in the middle at an inter-insular.

I say that because something he did – in Guernsey’s favour, it must be said – so upset my mate and fellow flat cap wearer that, probably without giving it a thought, he uttered the time-honoured Channel Island criticism of referees, be they in football, rugby, boxing or perhaps even netball.

In short, he made a reference to white sticks, St Dunstan’s or guide dogs. Indeed, possibly it could have been all three. What I do know is that it was all said with a smile and what was said could have been repeated in front of a room full of narrow-minded matrons.

The response was unexpected, primarily because there was one and, without putting too fine a point on it, indicated that there was room only for ‘one b***dy referee’ and if that was unacceptable then we should leave.
Needless to say, we were already heading for the exit but not before one of the carrot crunchers with a green and white rosette on caught up and commiserated, saying that the man in black’s reaction was way over the top.

I said earlier that I hadn’t been to a match since but that’s not quite true because at the back end of last year I took our neighbour who had hurt his foot and couldn’t drive to see a couple of his grandsons play in a primary school match.

Having spent half an hour just a few feet from the touchline, all I can say after that experience is that times have certainly changed since I was that age and played for my school junior team against the likes of Vauxhall, New Street, La Motte and St Mark’s, and boy, were that lot a bunch of cloggers on their day.

If you were fouled then you rubbed the bit where the stud marks were, took the free kick if you were lucky enough to get one and got on with the game.

Now, if what I witnessed with the kids I was watching is the norm, foul-mouthed parents scream instructions to their brats and obscenities at everyone else within earshot, they encourage children to feign injury or, at the very least, to make a meal of it, and they strut about as if their next week’s wages were dependant on the result.

I thought about all that when I read the other evening that the Jersey Football Association are to launch something called RESPECT, although I doubt spelling anything with block capitals is likely to influence the morons both on the field and on the touchline at which it should be directed.

Indeed, they seem to take their lead from the obscenely paid prima donnas who ‘grace’ our television screens on an almost daily basis with acting performances that merit, as the very least, Oscar nominations, if not the statuette itself.

So the likelihood of an end to surrounding and intimidating officials, foul language that a child of five can lip read, and all the rest of what passes for football these days is somewhat less than me signing the pledge.

In short, until something is done about the example shown by players who appear regularly on television screens, primarily playing football at Premier League and international level, then I’m afraid that, capital letters or not, RESPECT is almost certainly doomed to failure.

Many years ago, I was no more than a teenager, I was on holiday in England and taken to see a Rugby League match. For the life of me, I can’t recall whether I was in Lancashire or Yorkshire but the home team was Featherstone Rovers.

The game hadn’t been on for more than a few minutes and the referee gave a free kick, or whatever the League equivalent is, and then, moments later, marched ten paces up the field and told the player to take it from there.

I asked the family I was with what that was all about and was told that the player against whom the foul was given had spoken to the ref, who immediately took the attacking team ten yards closer to their opponents’ goal line.

I’ve never forgotten it. A ten-yard penalty for talking. Not intimidation, not calling the referee all the obscenities under the sun, not feigning injury in the hope of getting an opponent yellow carded or sent off, but just talking to the referee.

If my memory is not at fault, didn’t Jersey take part in an experiment a few years back to see if a similar rule would work on the soccer field? I strongly suspect that it was as well-intentioned as is this RESPECT one. I also strongly suspect that it was kicked into oblivion for the same reason, I suggest, that RESPECT will be.

Quite simply, they are starting at the wrong end. The problem is that there’s money at the other end and the administrators are afraid of that.

And finally . . .
Now that the cabinet and their critics have finished their latest slanging match, perhaps some of them will get on with running this place.