Football abuse: 'The game can't afford to lose more refs'

Rohan Anand says he's faced discrimination when refereeing

Abuse at professional football matches is back in the headlines after AC Milan's keeper and a Coventry City player were racially targeted at the weekend.

And while these high-profile instances get a lot of attention, there's also an issue at grassroots level according to one former official.

Rohan Anand spent 10 years overseeing amateur games and won the Football Association (FA) Grassroots Referee of the Year award in 2014.

He's now turned his attention to behaviour off the pitch, and the abuse suffered by young match officials presiding over Sunday Leagues across the UK.

The Football Association (FA) released its own data last month documenting 1,451 cases of abuse, including assaults and threats - an increase of 1% on the year before.

Rohan tells BBC Asian Network there's a shortage of grassroots referees, and agrees with European governing body UEFA that there's a "crisis" in the game.

"We just can't afford to lose more referees," says Rohan. "No ref, no game at the end of the day."

'Escorted from the pitch in tears'

The 27-year-old has an insight into the abuse dished out at pitches across the UK every weekend thanks to the Refsuite app, which he set up.

Rohan says it's mainly to allow grassroots refs to show their availability and fill in match reports.

But it's also a place for an estimated 8,000 users to log abuse, providing data that can be used to illustrate the extent of the problem.

Rohan reads one report from a 17-year-old who was overseeing an under-15s game.

"A massive fight broke out between two sets of players, managers and parents," they said.

"It was completely out of my hands. I actually ended up having a breakdown because it was that horrible, and I was escorted away from the pitch in tears."

And another, from a 15-year-old who'd been reffing an under-12s fixture.

"One of the assistant managers threw my flag into the ground, breaking it," they said.

"Then he pushed this 11-year-old player on the side line, and after the game he came up to me and made a joke about my heritage because of where I'm from."

Former Premier League referee Kevin Friend presented Rohan with his Grassroots ref of the Year award

Being verbally attacked because of his skin colour was something Rohan, who's of Indian heritage, also faced.

"Honestly, I always had my guard up, primarily because of the colour of my skin," he says.

"I was racially abused on several occasions.

"I'm proud of my heritage, but it does feel at times, like being bullied. You know, sometimes it did make me want to give up as well.

"You do develop a bit of thick skin but that really isn't the solution to the problem."

The FA recently announced it was expanding a trial of body cameras as part of wider attempts to tackle abuse.

Javed Miah was part of the original trial in Essex and says the visible camera on his chest had a deterrent effect.

"I definitely noticed players who maybe at other times might have gone over the top or in your face but, seeing the camera, they took a step back," he says.

The FA says it wants to recruit 1,000 extra black and Asian referees and 1,000 extra female refs by 2026.

Referee Sana Gill says football has come a long way in attitudes towards women and minorities but: "That colour brown is still a big thing"

Sana says she's faced derogatory comments about her gender as well as her Pakistani heritage since she started at grassroots.

"It wasn't a welcoming space," she says.

"Being a female was hard. On top of that, being Asian made things difficult. There's so many barriers that I needed to break.

She's since started a women's team in Birmingham to create a safe space for Asian women to play football.

Sana feels football has come a long way but there's still more steps to take

Rohan hopes his app will be part of the solution - by helping to quantify the scale of abuse faced by refs.

Alongside its main scheduling function, Refsuite has an urgent support button that will quickly flag any reports of alleged offences.

If it's pressed, Rohan says, it "immediately sends a notification to our team, to the league, to the county FA, and then if that referee is under the age of 18, to the guardian or parent."

He hopes this will keep more refs on the pitch by giving them quicker access to help.

"By speeding up the process, we can jump on it as early as possible, making sure they get the welfare support much quicker than previously," he says.

Rohan says this could include working with the local FA to make sure the ref gets easier fixtures, and brings reports to the attention of authorities more quickly.

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But he admits there's a long way to go, and the app is just one part of it.

"The urgent support button gets used far more frequently than we would like," Rohan says.

"These are issues within society and tribalism with football.

"We need to change people's behavioural traits, which is a much bigger problem.

"Hopefully, with more technology like ours making data more accessible, we can slowly start to eradicate it from the game."

Listen to Ankur Desai's show on BBC Asian Network live from 15:00-18:00 Monday to Thursday - or listen back here.