MARK CLATTENBURG: Will it take a referee to die for English football to wake up to this pandemic? Please, if you attend a game this weekend, show respect

Before the international break we saw one of the biggest games in the history of the Premier League: Chelsea 4, Manchester City 4. A beautiful spectacle, but marred by the ugly final of Mauricio Pochettino who stormed onto the pitch at full-time to insult Anthony. Taylor. It drips from top to bottom.

The difference is at the basic level. There are no cameras or stewards there to make that angry guy think twice about what he’s going to do when he approaches you.

It is a situation that has gotten out of hand at the grassroots level of our game and a topic that should have been at the forefront of the massive media coverage of football long ago.

It’s far worse than simply being called a “damn cheat******” by the parent of the player you just punished for a foul, no matter how grotesque that is.

This week we heard from Rhys Baldwin and George Sleigh on Mail Sport’s It’s All Kicking Off podcast. How Rhys was threatened with knives not once but twice. How George will live with metal plates in his jaw for the rest of his life. There are many more with horror stories like theirs, I’m sad to say.

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They’ve managed to tell the story, but sometimes it can feel like English football is waiting for its first death before these embarrassing scenes get the attention they really deserve.

You have 28,000 referees in Britain and yet there is a constant recruitment drive to sign up more people to wear black at the weekend. Why? Because it’s such a struggle to keep referees on the roster. Who can blame blossoming officials like Rhys or George for wanting to quit? No matter how much you love football, the €40 match fee will never compensate for the abuse you experience.

The problem is that there is no protection for the people at the grassroots, whether you are supervising a game involving children or adults. The lack of respect is remarkable and the Premier League must lead by example first and foremost.

I was 16 years old when my teacher, Mr Reach, took a few of us from Cramlington High School for a refereeing exam. He had told me the news that I would never make it as a professional football player and thought that this might be for the best.

When I was 18 I was refereeing adult matches and, as you can imagine, abuse was routine. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. I once had a player say to me that if I gave him a red card he would break my legs.

I finally lost patience in the 75th minute and he said he would wait for me full time to keep his promise. I’ve spent the last fifteen minutes wondering if I would have to spend the next three months in a wheelchair. I escaped unscathed.

But it wasn’t just on the pitch where you encountered these threats. Being local to the matches you officiate at the grassroots, I’d be in a pub with my friends and a guy might come up to me. I didn’t remember him.

But he remembered me because I was the ‘damn t***’ who gave him a red card. This is the grim reality that every referee at the grassroots level faces. The lighting is extraordinary.

I was refereeing Premier League matches when a friend asked for a favor. He wondered if I was free to officiate a top under-15s match in Sunderland. I agreed to help.

Easy, right?

Wrong. There was one parent on the sidelines who abused me the entire time. Finally I walked up to him, dropped my whistle and said, “You do it if you think you’re good enough.”

He was thrown out by the other parents who wanted the game to continue. I had the confidence to do that. After all, I was used to officiating matches in front of tens of thousands of people. But should a 16-year-old referee have the courage to do that?

I always watched my son play on the weekends and I kept my trap shut no matter what. But some of the vitriol coming out of the parents’ mouths was extraordinary. The players on the field see that and think: ‘If my father can do that, so can I.’ It will only lead to disrespect from the next generation towards our referees unless we see a cultural change in this country.

There is a certain level of discipline involved in overseeing competitions involving academies. The players know that if they go too far, they risk losing their scholarships. The same goes for the parents of those prospects. There are tangible consequences for their actions.

But the grassroots local parks have turned into the wild west of football. It can be a thankless task for those trying to enforce the law in such lawless circumstances.

Only recently did we see a statement from the Northumberland Football League saying the behavior was ‘the worst we have ever seen’. They had to threaten to cancel the matches unless parents stop behaving like ‘hooligans’.

I’ve heard of an initiative that involves using ropes around the perimeter of the pitch – sometimes called ‘respect barriers’ – but that can be as effective as putting a plaster on a broken leg. Penalties for players, coaches, spectators – anyone who abuses – must be strong enough to prevent this from ever happening again, while I would also encourage every grassroots referee to wear a bodycam as an extra layer of protection against abuse.

If you are attending a match where you live this weekend, I urge you to show respect to your referee, not abuse. We’ve had enough.