OFFSET YOUR WORLD CUP TRAVEL WITH GREENERTRAVEL
Date: 16th April 2024
Back in the 1990s, Peter Glancey worked a beat as a community police officer in Glasgow. This led him to becoming became involved with Milton’s Arsenal Boy’s Club and this, in turn, led him on to become thoroughly involved in youth football on a much bigger scale. Today, Peter is Scottish Youth FA West Region Chairman and every weekend he is involved in organising games for over 7,000 youngsters across the city. This means he has a unique insight into the difficulties faced in getting these games on, week-in, week-out. Two of the biggest problems across Scotland are that there are lots of teams but not enough parks and not enough referees. Here’s what Peter told us…
“The problem of not having enough referees isn’t too bad in Glasgow, but Aberdeen and Angus do suffer from a lack of officials, as does Renfrewshire and a few other areas. There are lots of other issues around the provision of referees for youth football though.
“Our games are played on Sundays, so there are fewer matches than on Saturdays, which makes it easier to get refs, but even so we do struggle at times. We tend to get younger referees. Unfortunately, they can be less reliable than older referees and more prone to call off the night before if they want to go out on the town and don’t fancy getting up for a game. In addition, the good ones are quickly recognised and moved up the ranks, out of our level of the game. Then there’s the fact that they get too much abuse, mostly, I’m sorry to say, from parents on the sidelines. Unsurprisingly, that puts many off.
“We have tried – with some success – to tackle the problem by getting the Glasgow Referees’ Association to communicate better with us. The Referees’ Associations tend to operate in silos and are not, in my experience, great at communication with what are, in effect, their customers. Part of our solution was to create a WhatsApp group for our referees, so they can all quickly be alerted if a game needs covered and then offer to take it. This works well for the most part.
“For the referees themselves, there is the problem that there is not a standard rate of pay across Scotland. For example, in Paisley and Central Scotland refs are paid £50 a game, but Glasgow pays only £40. Refs at amateur level are paid £50. Most amateur football is played on a Saturday, but if we’re playing on a Sunday and a ref has the opportunity to take an amateur game that day – and get an extra tenner – then obviously they prefer to take the money. I do a lot of 9 vs 9 games, for which we pay refs £25 – so it only costs each team £12.50 – and fortunately a lot of refs are prepared to do our matches because they know what a difference it makes to the kids. But bear in mind that over a weekend referees can do three of four games and so the amount they are paid per game does make a difference. Moreover, just because a ref is based in Glasgow doesn’t mean they can only officiate in the city. There is nothing to stop them travelling for more money, and who can blame them. There should definitely be a national pay structure for referees at our level, as there is at the professional level. You’d have thought it wasn’t beyond the wit of the SFA to organise this. Similarly, I’d love it if, as happens at the senior level, someone from the local Referee Association came to all the regional leagues and talked about the changes to the laws that are introduced almost every season. We know that most managers, coaches, players and fans don’t know all the laws, but it would prevent at least some of the abuse that crops up because people don’t know what the change to the handball law is this season!”
“As for pitches, with local authorities under increasing financial pressures, many have shut down their parks over the years. In Glasgow, the schools own parks, but these come under the Council Education department and so we can’t easily access them. John Sutton, man of many Scottish (and English) clubs, has his own football training company and he told me recently that be is finding it difficult to expand it because of a lack of playing fields. This applies across Scotland and leads to what may seem strange geographical anomalies, where, for example, we have teams from Oban and Campbeltown playing in our Glasgow League. This is turn causes us a problem getting refs to go to these far-flung places when they can just as easily go a game in the town.
“On top of all this, there is the constant battle for the youth leagues to keep costs down. We’re told there is a new SFA new computer system coming that has been used successfully in Welsh, Irish and Scandinavian football and which we’ll have to adopt. However, this comes at a cost (I’ve heard it’s over £3M) and so the SFA wants to recoup the money by charging Associations to pay to register their players. At a fee of £10 a player that probably means about £200 a team and, in our case, with over 7,000 players we’d have to find £70,000. You don’t have to be a genius to see how this is going to lead to fewer lads playing football…”
Interview, Alastair Blair, Director of Operations, SFSA
Posted in: Latest News
Tags: Refereeing