EUREKA!

I have found the true meaning of the prefix “www” on the internet. No, it’s not world wide web, at least not when it comes to football fans and referees. It’s actually weekly whinging witch-hunt.

Seriously, enough of all this. How is it that every A-League round degenerates into a slanging match involving referees? Are football fans the biggest bunch of whiny, hard-done-by, sports fans in the country? I’m beginning to wonder.

The latest official to suffer the slings and arrows of public outrage is Strebre Delovski, who had the temerity to award two penalties in the Brisbane-Newcastle game, plus a red card to Nigel Boogaard. Ben Williams also copped a pasting for dismissing Besart Berisha in Wellington.

Whatever you think of the decisions - and I’m not about to re-open the wounds by discussing the rights & wrongs - can we not just accept that such decisions are part of the game? Let the clubs appeal in private if they feel the need.

The laws of football contain some rather grey areas, leaving lots of decisions open to interpretation. Debate is understandable - but must we have this weekly inquest into whether a ref is biased (normally mangled into “he’s bias” on the great human graffiti wall of social media), incompetent, corrupt, or all three?

The truth is that our referees are none of the above.

There’s a good reason why those who take charge of top-level games are put in that position. They’ve had to go through a long process of training and assessment, and they wouldn’t be there if they weren’t the cream of the crop.

Think Australian refs are sub-standard in comparison to the rest of the world? Rubbish. Referees suffer abuse everywhere. This is a peculiarly football trait, and it’s time we all took responsibility for toning down the rhetoric.

No referee is perfect, but no referee makes a mistake on purpose. He has only a millisecond to make up his mind about a situation that can have huge ramifications for clubs, players and coaches. He has no access to replays, and, at best, only three other people to help him, sometimes in a stadium of 20,000 hostile fans.

Most of the time, refs get their decisions right. But when they get things wrong, boy do we hear about it. The mob want retribution, suspensions, sackings. Soon no doubt, TV executives will introduce hotlines, where fans can vote to evict referees from the pitch. Truly, they’ve become the modern day circus freak show.

Referee Strebre Delovski gives a red card to Nigel Boogaard. Source: Getty Images

Players crowd around referees, coaches harangue fourth officials, fans boo and intimidate, and yes, we’re to blame in the media too. Every contentious decision is forensically dissected, with the help of all sorts of slow-mo, freeze-frame whizz bangery. Quite honestly, refs, working only with the naked eye, don’t stand a chance, and you’d have to be an utter masochist to want to do the job - and therein lies a cautionary tale.

As I’ve reported before in these columns, numbers of junior referees are struggling to keep pace with the enormous surge in playing numbers. Worse, young refs are giving the game away by the time they hit 16, because this abuse is spiralling down towards the grassroots. Sooner or later, we’re going to have a refereeing crisis, where no-one will want to take charge of games - and who can blame them?

Regular readers of my articles will know I have no love for the other “football” codes. There’s a good reason why those games have limited worldwide popularity. They’re just not football.

But I’ll give those sports credit in one area - and it’s probably one of the few things we can learn from them. When a ref makes a decision, the players, by and large, accept it. They move back into position, and get on with the game.

Sure, there’s some discussion in the media - and yes, their officials get a bit more help with video technology. But only football seems to have this feeding frenzy every seven days, where the referees’ performance assumes greater importance than the players themselves. You’d be forgiven for thinking the teams involved didn’t actually have ninety minutes to atone for whatever alleged crime has been committed.

So, what to do?

Disband the Match Review Panel, which adds to this vendetta-type mentality by re-refereeing every game on a weekly basis. Convene it only for very special cases - make it the exception, not the norm.

Instead, let’s change the emphasis, by introducing a system whereby clubs are forced to take the lead on showing respect for officials. Players crowding the ref? One strike. Coaches haranguing the officials? One strike. Three strikes, and you get a substantial fine.

Allow coaches and players to have a view in the post-match media conferences by all means - but for pity’s sake, during the ninety minutes of play, can we please just get on with the game? Maybe then, if we’re really lucky, the fans will follow the example being set on the pitch - sadly, just as they are doing now.