Now that Brian Barwick has stated his intention to crack down on players who show a lack of respect for referees, no one will ever again be able to accuse the Football Association's chief executive of being lackadaisical when it comes to tackling one of the game's uglier problems. Fortunately, the Oxford English Dictionary is crammed with alternatives, and the two that immediately catch the eye are craven and misguided.
From January no one on the field will be allowed to talk to the referee apart from the team captains, at least not in lower-level matches falling under the jurisdiction of an FA pilot scheme. The professional game, meanwhile, will plough on, abased as ever, until news filters back from Hackney Marshes to the dressing rooms of Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge that a new dawn has broken, that the time has come for all Premier League sinners to repent.
This scenario seems implausible to those of us labouring under the impression that grassroots footballers have always take their behavioural cues from those they watch on television every week and not the other way around. Fortunately, Barwick, football's very own Baldrick, went on to explain his cunning plan: "In my opinion this thing has to start at the bottom."
This has to rank among the silliest statements ever to come from the mouth of someone wearing an FA tie. And that really is saying something. The point is that any attempt to increase respect for referees has to start at the top. To argue otherwise is to accept the - admittedly entertaining - prospect of Sir Alex Ferguson, a habitual critic of referees, and John Terry, last seen apparently trying to grab a red card out of a ref's hand, signing a "memorandum on behavioural standards" after being assured it went down a storm in the Walthamstow and District Amateur Sunday League. It will never happen and when he gets back to his hotel after taking the applause at the latest roadshow gig, the FA's chief executive must surely realise this unpalatable truth.
Still, a little credit where it is due. Barwick has at least recognised there is a problem. Referees are not shown enough respect, as anyone who witnessed Terry and his team-mates assailing Mike Dean at Old Trafford will confirm. Yet accusing the Chelsea players of treating Dean disrespectfully doesn't change the fact Dean had a shocker that day, as have more than a few of his colleagues this season.
There are good referees - a quick office poll came up with Howard Webb and Lee Probert - but is it too much to ask that we find more of their ilk in a country of our size? If so, is it then too disrespectful to argue that referees should earn the respect that comes their way? Maybe I've been unlucky in my choice of viewing but it is hard to remember a time when so many high-profile games have been affected by such poor decisions.
Elevating refereeing incompetence to the status of divine writ might prevent the kind of scenes witnessed at Old Trafford but it won't do anything to protect the game from crap referees. Even worse, it might one day create a problem that is far more damaging than those it solved if recent events in NBA basketball were to be repeated. In the United States referees are untouchable. Players and team officials showing dissent on the court are banished, while heckling from the owner's box is an expensive business. Mark Cuban, billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a persistent critic of refereeing standards, has been fined around $1.5m over the last five years, including a $200,000 fine for saying he wouldn't want the head of the NBA's director of officiating to run a Dairy Queen fast-food restaurant.
Cuban has keep his trap shut recently. It could be because even spendthrift billionaires have their limits, or it could be because he no longer feels the need to speak out. Earlier in the summer, Tim Donaghy, an NBA referee of 13 years' standing, pleaded guilty to betting on NBA games and tipping off big-stakes gamblers about games he was officiating. He will go to jail next month, possibly for as long as 10 years - a scant consolation to the NBA as it tries to restore its damaged reputation, knowing only too well that Donaghy was able to go about his nefarious business under the cover afforded him by deification of NBA referees.
