I agree. It then needs to be followed with strong punishment from BARLA.

had two games called off this year due to abusive parents, this is first year i have taken a team and i was shocked how bad parents are, and i have found the coaches and touchline managers just as bad

lets not tarnish all parents,coaches and clubs with the same brush,the majority of parents are pretty good and well behaved.i coach at u11s and most games pass with no trouble at all however certain fixtures at certain clubs you just no that their will be tension and most often trouble,imo these clubs have been aloud to get away with it for far too long and thats not down to referee`s its higher up the chain who dont back up their officials with effty fines and bans.

refereeing is an awful job which the most of us wouldnt even entertain doing and they are prone to making errors the same has the players are,i take my hat off to them has they do a job which makes sure we have a game to watch in the first place.

You never fail to crack me up

Well said but something has do be done about the minority who are causing this trouble. At the end of the day if a random person who had never watched Rugby in their life saw this game today they wouldn't be watching the sport again

If it's a minority it's a significant and vocal minority, and it's present at an awful lot of clubs.

True. It will only get sorted when the governing bodies become stricter and start fines. Maybe even move parents further away from the pitch so it will minimise it but it still doesn't get rid of the problem

back in my under 15s days i was once getting so much abuse from the opposition coach i ended up having a punch up with him. sufffice to say he wasnt so vocal or aggressive once he had been owned by a 15 year old in front of 50 people.

And then your alarm clock went off right?

no actually. now stop being a blert bazza.

Maybe you are right.

Perhaps there was a spate of U15's and their parents verbally abusing match officials in the TW2 area of South West London a few years ago.

I reffed an U16s tournament yesterday. The vast majority of players and adults were perfectly behaved. There was one parent of one team, however, who decided to barrack from the touchline. The RFL guy running the comp went over and had some words, and he shut up after a couple of games. If he hadn't, I would have refused to referee any more of his team's games until he removed himself from the vicinity. The key, I've found, is not to get angry or distressed, but to simply hit the "calm and dispassionate" button. In that regard, I guess being a teacher is helpful, because the behaviour is quite similar to that you might get from an unreasonable kid in a classroom. In the past, I have sent spectators off, by halting play until they put themselves in the clubhouse out of earshot. However, it should never get to that. It is absolutely the responsibility of the management of the team in question to control their own "supporters". I'll be coaching this summer in the RLC, and if any of our fans/followers start abusing the ref, it'll be me who tells them to can it.

I ended up doing 18 10-minute games, so I was a bit knackered at the end, and most coaches and players came over and thanked me and the other ref after the final. There are some nutters who set pretty poor examples to kids, but they are a minority, at least in London and the south-east.

Sadly it seems to be a "heartlands" issue, at least in my experience anyway.

With all due respect Roy from what I've witnessed school teachers are amongst the least likely people to be able to control any incidents of dissent/public order/disorderly conduct.

Most teachers I know (and sadly I know a few) have little or no interpersonal skills and their idea of 'controlling' a situation is just to shout a lot, have a little tanty and send the kid (or kids) to the headmaster.

Teachers are an unfortunate breed. They have never really left school... or certainly never left that type of environment. Give them a situation that doesnt involve berating a small child or writing stuff on a whiteboard and they are stumped.

To be fair, I think most teachers coming across you, either in or out of the classroom, would recognise you as an attention-seeking cretin and treat you in a special way. So you probably shouldn't generalise from your own experience. I'll explain "generalise" for you, if you like. Or "cretin".

Now don't try to answer my posts again. I'm one of the grown-ups here. Go back to being bullied by the other kids while I make a brew in the staffroom.