The comparative scale of English football’s culture of referee abuse is laid bare by new research showing that match officials in France and Holland are more than seven times less likely to endure frequent verbal abuse.

In what is the biggest study of its sort - and the first that allows direct comparisons across countries - researchers discovered a series of common issues in Europe, but stark differences in the regularity of abuse compared to their previous findings in England.

In Holland, just 2.2 per cent of referees said that they experienced verbal abuse in every game or couple of games. This figure was 14.4 per cent in France but had rocketed to 60 per cent when English officials were asked the exact same question in 2015. Referees in Holland and France are also far more likely to have never received any verbal abuse (respectively 44.8 per cent and 30.3 per cent) against just six per cent of English officials who reported having never been abused. An experience of physical abuse was also highest in England at 19 per cent, compared respectively to 16 per cent and 14.6 per cent in France and Holland.

As part of the ‘Save Our Game’ grassroots campaign, The Telegraph reported earlier this season how the the charity Ref Support had experienced a spike in calls to its helpline and that games even at a relatively high grassroots level had been abandoned due to disorder. It all also follows anger from referees on Thursday over the perceived leniency of Crawley Town in issuing only a three game ban to a fan who hit an assistant referee with a plastic bottle.