Concordia Regional Soccer Association hires marshals to combat violence against referees in Montreal

The Concordia Regional Soccer Association (ARSC) has launched a pilot program to protect young referees from on-field harassment.

The referee marshals will be able to help these refs during their first year of refereeing since they have the power to intervene.

The marshals job will be to ensure that there is no physical or verbal abuse directed at the official from the coaches, players or spectators.

“Sometimes the issue is at 14, 15 years old, you might think that you are the problem on the field, but when you get yelled at you think maybe it’s my fault, maybe it’s because I’m not good,” said AS Laval Referee Coordinator Emerik Tessier. “So, it’s difficult for them to speak up. The media helped a lot of young referees tell their stories.”

Tessier is a provincial league and Senior AAA referee, who also trains new and upcoming referees.

He said games at the U Sports and Senior AAA level have been cancelled due to a referee shortage.

Additionally, the ARSC reported they’ve seen a 40 per cent turnover rate for young referees in their league.

“I’ve been lucky enough not to have a lot of extreme situations. But you will get verbally abused a lot, get yelled at a lot, so you have to get used to it. It’s very difficult to get used to,” said Tessier. “I can think of one young girl, around 14 years old, reffing one of her first games. And she called me at 9 p.m. after the game, crying. She just the experience the worst situation; she was yelled at by a 40-year-old coach. Her parents were crying on the phone. So, this is one of the situations that I have to deal with.”

The program was launched nearly three weeks ago and the ARSC has three marshals in operation.

The marshal will introduce themselves to the coaches at the beginning of the game and walk around the field to monitor the spectators and coaches.

Their role is to handle the security and safety of the young officials. 

“So, let’s say a call is made on the field and a parent or a coach says, ref, open your eyes. And then that tends to escalate if it’s not nipped in the bud, especially if it’s directed towards young referees that don’t know how to handle that,” explained ARSC Referee Director Marco Pantanella. “A young 15-year-old that’s in the first year of reffing doesn’t necessarily have the experience or the courage to go talk to an adult, address them and you know, card them or send them out. So, in that case we do need an adult that’s there to sort of act like a guardian angel for these referees and that’s what the role is.”

The marshal can’t intervene in refereeing decisions but if the official is getting harassed and not handling it properly, that’s where the marshal can step in. 

“I heard about the program, and I think it’s a very good first step in making sure that the fields are safe for referees, especially the youngest ones. So, we’re really looking forward to seeing the results of this pilot project,” said Tessier.

However, Tessier said that he’s had several verbally abusive encounters, that nearly escalated into violence. 

“They were waiting for us, preventing us from leaving the parking lot, we had to call the police. So, this is a type of situations that do happen not often, but it does happen sometimes.”

Pantanella said the public’s response to their new initiative has been positive so far. 

“We had various people applaud the initiative. Anybody that we talked to before the game starts, so when the marshals address the coaches, they’re aware of the initiative, they support it. And so far, we haven’t had any major incident where the game had to be stopped. We wanted the role of the marshal to be restricted towards referee abuse. Maybe the community as a whole can take a preventive step and say well now there’s a marshal that can address behavior like this, but maybe we can address it as well,” said Pantanella.

According to Tessier, he hopes that coaches, players and referees can stop being pitted against each other because they’re all they’re for the same reason; love of the sport.

“No one wants to become a referee because they want to get into confrontation with players or coaches, they just want to be on the field. They’re there because they want to be part of soccer in another way.”