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KEEP IT SHUT!
We are very fortunate at this club that we have very little trouble on the pitch caused by our players or indeed off the pitch caused by club officials or by supporters or spectators. We are very grateful to all of you for this and we want to keep it this way which we can do with your help. However, this is not the case everywhere. Indeed, I know through my role in refereeing that in the Tamworth Junior League this season there have been several instances where the referees have been verbally abused and intimidated, mainly our younger referees. This is absolutely out of order and needs to stop. In this club we have at least 14 qualified referees, all except three are current players in our teams and some of them have had trouble already this season. It takes a lot of bottle for a youngster to become a referee and they deserve our support. There is a huge shortage of referees everywhere, and certainly locally. On Sunday afternoons, we are about 8 - 10 referees short every week for the older Junior League matches and on Sunday mornings we are 4 or 5 referees short every week for adult matches. So why do referees get abused and forced to stop, it doesn't make sense especially as everyone prefers to have a qualified referee at their games. Which is why there is a campaign nationally gathering pace called "KEEP IT SHUT!"
See this website for more details: