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I thought the main aim of the FA's Respect campaign was to increase the level of respect shown to referee's and to take action where dissent was shown? So what the fuck happened over the last few days with the Fulham v Man Utd game?

Rooney throws the ball in anger at the referee, anyone who says he was just throwing the ball back is talking shit (ie Alex Fergusson), and rightly gets a second yellow card. He goes ballistic with the referee, but the FA have decided that as he didn't swear its ok. Him kicking the corner flag doesn't matter as the ref didn't see it.

You then had at least 3 Man Utd players going off on one with the referee after Rooney was shown red, at minimum Ferdinand should have been booked for the way he reacted. Sounds like the FA have turned a blind eye to this as well.

I'm not Man Utd fan but I'd say the same things if it was another club. Though far too often it is a group of Man Utd players harassing the referee when they're not happy with a decision. There were also two or three other sending offs at the weekend which were questionable, one of them very dodgy but there was no similar reaction from those players or teams.

I'm just sick of the level of dissent that players show officials on the pitch and managers show them off it. When are the FA actually going to grow some balls and do something about it? Next time a manager calls a referee a cheat, fine the fucker (most likely this will be Steve Bruce) £100k and he'll think twice next time.

You don't get this shit in rugby. Why can't we just implement whatever rules they have to sort it out?

They should mic up the refs like they do in rugby. That would put a stop to it.

Didn't need a mic to tell what Rooney was saying. Ronaldo should be locked in a room with 5 or 6 refs with a prison showers "Don't ask, don't tell" rule

To be fair though Man U do get special treatment as they do have special players  - the FA will only act if it was one of the lesser clubs

It seemed to me the respect thing was made a mockery of pretty early on in the season with managers slagging off referees.

Respect campaign has never been implemented properly this season. The FA are too scared to punish any of the big clubs.

I thought we all knew 'Respect' was a token gesture with the goal to make it 'look' like they were trying to make changes.

To be honest I enjoy watching petulant hissy fit :D

So do I, and it would be much more sweet if there was a booking at the end of it.

this is what's happened (painful):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezZ2ZRfSsLY

I've bene instructed by the FA tp show that to the parents of the team I coach. As if...

"...but for just £1 a month we can help referees...."

They Ray Winstone thing nearly made me cry - Its upsets me when hes mean to the little boy and the ref

It's never going to work until a half decent set of referee's exist............ we've experienced enough garbage ref's this season to realise refereeing standards are way below an acceptable level, how can the FA expect players, managers, fans etc respect people who are completely incompetant.  I think this season has been really bad for referee's with a number of unprecedented blunders such Attwell's phantom goal and the Man City v Chelsea ref lying in his match report about why he sent off Terry so the FA seem to have just given up.

On SSN this morning they were discussing the possibility of female refs and surprisingly a lot of men had written in to say that they couldnt do a worse job than the men and actually had high opinions of women refs!  Thats a whole new debate for sure!

They would have to be the dominant matriarchal type though.

"If you don't listen, you won't be getting any dinner".

How much do referee's get paid now? With all the money in the Premier League I'm all in favour of them paying them giving them a massive pay rise to bring them more in line with the players and to bring in foreign referee's (who would be attracted by the pay) so we really do have the best in the world. No doubt other leagues would be pissed at us taking their referee's but if they're from with the EU there will be fuck all they can do about it without the EU getting on their case.

But you can't just blame the referee's. The lack of support they get from the FA is disgraceful, as is the way that players, managers and the media treat them. Mic them up so everyone knows why they made a decision and make them do interviews after the game to explain themselves. Everyone would feel better about referee's if they stood up after a game and publicly admitted they fucked up.

I agree. If they consistently 'rewarded' dissent with an automatic yellow card, 0 tolerance, and did that for an entire season it would stop. Except the season would probably last until 2013 by the time all the abandoned games got replayed.

Totally agree that they need more support from the FA. The fact that players in the football league get an extra game added onto their ban for "taking more than 30 seconds to leave the playing area" is a joke in comparison to hissy-fit corner-flag-punching dissent.

And how Ronaldo stayed on the pitch last week I'll never know. James Lawton wrote a pretty good piece in the Independent today saying the boy needs to grow up and stop acting like a spoilt little shit. Or something like that...

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/james-lawton-how-long-will-it-take-ferguson-to-turn-his-boy-wonder-into-a-football-man-1652635.html

totally agree.  If the standard of reffing was high I could totally understand the respect campagn.  But its not. its dire by and large.  Rob Styles is STILL a premier league ref FFS.

What the FA need to do is be seen to do something about refs who make big blunders consistantly. not move them down to league 1 for a fortnight then back to the premier league, sack them for incompetance.

I can totally understand why managers get so upset with bad decisions when the people who make them are not accountable in any way for their actions

I thought there was a strong argument that Ronaldo should have been shown red for the foul he got the yellow for. The way he went in warranted a red but I guess the ref let him off as he missed their player by a yard, which shouldn't have been a factor. No doubt the ref bottled it as well with it being Man Utd and Ronaldo. This is what happens when managers like Fergusson are allowed to lambast referee's the way they do, it gets inside the referee's heads and they think twice when it comes to dishing out the cards to their players.

As regards the standard of reffing, sure some make some bad decisions but there are some excellent refs as well who seldom make mistakes. But you can't solve every problem at once, I just think the refs being shown more respect and stamping out dissent is the place to start.

logically jonny its not the place to start at all

If you remove the reason for the dissent which is often incorrect decisions the refs instantly get more respect.

I think football would become pretty sterile if there weren't any incorrect or dubious decisions, what would we talk about? Besides the reason for dissent isn't incorrect decisions, its the players who are jumped up twats who absolutely no respect for the referee and think they can get away with whatever the fuck they want.

The ref got all the decisions right in the Fulham v Man Utd game, which blows your theory out of the water. Unless you're the only other person in the world (along with Sir Alex) who thinks Rooney was just throwing the ball back for the free kick to be taken again and that he slipped when he got to the corner flag and never meant to kick it.

They are trying, but you can't eradicate human error. There will always be things that will be down to interpretation, there will always be mistakes made.

Other than that I agree with jonny72, and addressing the line of acceptable behaviour is a separate issue from addressing the competence of refs.

-There needs to be an overview of referee training and developement, with a progressive route into top class refereeing. The FA should be involved in supporting ,and investing in referees, from the moment they gain qualified status – at the moment nothing like this exists and it is very much left down to the individual to improve.

-Players should have more respect for referees and stop being such whiney cunts.

Agree with that, players should respect the ref more. Can't help feeling that at the end of the day its fighting a losing battle. Top professionals are never going to bother setting a decent example due to their hefty wage packets and general disregard for anything else. Fines should be larger for suspensions and for bookings within a club too, especially for dissent. Another reason it isn't working has been highlighted in this thread, ref's aren't allowed to make mistakes and so are jumped on too quickly. Don't buy the argument saying that if they made as many mistakes in another profession they'd get sacked/suspened etc, because at the end of the day if they were respected in the first place you'd have a higher number of refs and ultimately of a better standard.