2 weeks Ago By Ellen Fitzpatrick
PUSHY parents on the sporting sidelines are nothing new. But now, adults are being banned from kids’ football leagues over their bad behaviour. The Dublin & District Schoolboys’/Girls’ League (DDSL) has seen an increase in reports of abuse at children’s matches.
Just last year, radio station Q102 and the DDSL teamed up to promote the league, which sees over 45,000 kids play in the capital. Now, they are launching their 'It’s My Game' campaign in a bid to shield kids from trouble on the touchline. In September alone, there were 62 red cards in the DDSL – but 95 per cent of them were given not to players, but to bystanders for abusing the ref, violence , threats and assault.
Here, the campaign’s Gary Bailey who has been with the DDSL for more than 20 years, explains why lout parents and spectators must be given the boot. WE TEAMED up with Q102 in early 2023 to promote the league. But the more we got into the promotion, the more we realised the cultural problems within kids’ football.
We set out a couple of pillars when we first met. The first was around culture in terms of abuse at kids’ games. If you have ever been at a kids’ football game, the carry-on of parents and coaches towards the referee, each other and, in some cases, towards the kids, is crazy.
The level of abuse and how people become absolute tyrants when they are involved in football is shocking. It’s so out of hand, some games have had armoured riot police coming. There’s been multiple violent assaults and riots.
It’s escalated so much, and there are so many disciplinary cases, that they just can’t deal with them. Fighting, bottles . .
. in one incident a 17-year-old referee was threatened to have his head chopped off, and two people knocked to his house that night, one in a balaclava, threatening him. An under-11 girls’ game was abandoned because six parents were punching the heads off each other while kids were screaming, crying to get their dads to stop fighting.
We’re not talking about the most elite levels of football here, but 10 year-old kids watching their parents going for each other. Why are people acting like lunatics at football games? There is a competitive nature, and you’d understand if it was an U18s cup final. But for U10s, they don’t even keep score.
Society, frustrations, hatred, psychological things, it’s bizarre. We don’t know what the cause of it is. But I have an idea that people are so frustrated in life and work , they can’t say what they want to say, so when it comes to football, they have free reign.
I play football myself and the levels of abuse referees get . . .
And there’s no consequences to acting like a scumbag. If you act like that in work or in a pub , there’s consequences. When the game is over, everyone goes back to their normal life, but the referee doesn’t.
That sits with them. And it sits with the kids when they witness their parents abusing someone else. They think that’s okay to do.
Kids don’t want to play any more. Referees are leaving the game — 25 left DDSL last year for the sole reason they were sick of getting abused. Kids are being kicked out of football clubs because of their parents, and that’s a regular thing.
So we are running a campaign to say, “It’s a kids’ game, let them be kids. Parents — shut up, stay out of it and just encourage them. If you have something negative to say, keep it in your mind”.
Parents are being brought into a disciplinary meeting, they are named and shamed, banned from games, fined. If they get multiple reports of abuse from one team, they get their game cancelled or pulled from the league and the kids won’t be able to play football because of the behaviour of coaches or parents. Clubs have been stripped of fixtures because of reports of abuse.
And it is not a certain part of the city, or community, it’s widespread. A parent got banned for 10 years from games — and they are a solicitor. But since we launched, the feedback has been phenomenal.
We’ve had clubs creating videos targeting parents. It’s been amazing and we hope it will have a positive effect..
