Football refs strike after violent incident at match
(CNS): Cayman’s football referees have “withdrawn their services” until the Cayman Islands Football Association (CIFA) takes action to deal with violence against these officials at local games. On Saturday a referee was assaulted during the Senior Men’s FA Cup Semi-Finals Match at the Ed Bush field between Future and Alliance FCs. With a scoreline of 3-0 to Future as injury time got underway, a coach from Alliance hit the referee, and according to the Cayman Islands Referee Association, this isn’t the first time.
Match officials downed flags and whistles on Sunday because of the violence and four of the men’s FA Cup games postponed. A spokesperson for the association of volunteer referees said the rest of the officials will continue to strike until the Cayman Islands Football Association does something.
Already this year there have been more than five reported incidents at matches aimed at referees involving physical attacks and discrimination based on gender, race or nationality, and the association believes there are many more unreported cases as well as verbal abuse against the volunteers, without whom the sport cannot function.
CNS Contacted CIFA but we have not received a response.
Sports Minister Osbourne Bodden, who remains in dispute with the local football association over a financial scandal, said he was saddened to hear of another incident.
“This is unacceptable behaviour and should be scorned upon by all players and clubs, and the responsible parties should be disciplined and sternly dealt with,” Bodden said. “Refs should be respected, and even when they make mistakes, they should be appreciated for the job they do and CIFA has a duty to protect them.”
But he pointed out that the ministry is still at odds with the football body as it has still not “been open and accountable” about the scandals surrounding the finances.
“We have very little correspondence with CIFA and there is no change to financing them,” the sports minister told CNS. “We continue to support youth football through other avenues, such as tournaments and special request cases for national teams etc, and of course through free use of our facilities.”
Bodden added that he hoped this latest violent matter would be handled properly and timely and will not affect the rest of the football season.
Category: Crime, Local News
A sanction must be imposed on the club too. A ban from the cup next year would be the minimum.
A ban for life would be more appropriate.
Zero tolerance for violence
Any violence leaves the person responsible banned for life. Get the trouble makes out of the game and play on.
The responsibility here is squarely in the shoulders of CIFA and it members who support the corruption for meager crumbs off the table. The sports office is not without blame either as they currently employed 3 or 4 community coaches who are also CIFA coaches.
One have to attend any CIFA sanctioned games and witness the behavior of these coaches and their teams, most of the times it is disgraceful. They do not do the work that is required to be successful on the pitch and therefore the referrers become and easy target for everything that goes wrong. Many parents are also complacence and supportive of this behavior as my little Johnny is never wrong.
Back to the point – This is a Sport. Players, Spectators and Coaches can all be passionate about it, but violence is unforgivable. As to the standards – what does the regulatory body have to say? A Referee’s qualifications should be beyond question, on and off the field. Whatever happened to “The Referee is always right….”?
Jus blam em from far
Oh, for crying out loud, if you are not prepared to act like an adult on the field stay at home and give us all a break. Keep your childish and immature antics to yourself, and when you have learned to control your precious “emotions” lace up your boots (or trainer’s, er, trainers) and enter the grown-ups world you silly men/boys.
These guys need to grow up and take CIFA out of the mess that FIFA put the sports and everyone in .
I meant FIFAWebb .
We can’t expect any changes when they are still playing the same old game. Has anyone been arrested for the CIFA scandal last year? We jump to stop funding the program but has the government or the police held anyone accountable for the crooked balance sheet? Isn’t it tax payers monies? See where I am going with this.
To be fair the ref standards here are horrible. As a player, assistant coach and supporter, I have seen negligence by officials during games on more than one occasion. That being said, it is NEVER acceptable to strike an official or any person on that matter. I applaud the refs for taking a stand. CIFA should now review their roster as well as implement harsh disciplinary action for the violent perpetrators involved. They should also ensure ALL officials are up to date and competent. I can understand frustration, but I certainly cannot understand trying to harm a referee over the beautiful game.
The ref standards here are horrible you say. Cayman is ranked 203 out of 211 teams by FIFA, so I don’t think the standard of refereeing is anything to be concerned about.
http://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/ranking-table/men/index.html
Sorry but I have to agree! The refs here think they know they game better than they actually do! They also let small incidents in games get out of control to the point it escalates to something like this. I’ve seen it happen far too often. Violence should not be tolerated on the football field!
Having watched Gibraltar and San Marino play in European competition, I know for a fact that they would destroy Cayman.
When you consider the funds that have been spent whether from Govt, private sector sponsorship, and FIFA, its a crying shame.
They need to throw the teams out that are non compliant with the rules, and provide all the help to the clubs that are helping to try and develop our youth.
Your comment doesn’t respond to my comment or the article at hand. If it were about Cayman’s low ranking then it would be applicable. So my opinion still stands: From MY experiences as a player, an assistant coach and a spectator, the refereeing standards are quite negative. That statement comes from MULTIPLE times where I witnessed ignorance of rules and regulations eg. Calling an offside on a Goal Kick or Throw in, which I have seen and been called for.
Regardless, I hope CIFA takes appropriate measures to ensure the perpetrators are disciplined and that refs are properly trained.
Do you realize why FIFA is given CIFA high rating , slack Government and easy pickings, remember the old FIFAWEBB , still exists today .
Why would anyone with refereeing skills or experience bother to volunteer ? CIFA gets the quality of officials that its organization pays for (assuming it still pays officials)and its players deserve – poor refs.
Alliance should be banned for a year from all competitions.
The coach should be banned for LIFE! What kind of example is that? The player should get at the very least 3 years banned.
Agreed. It really is simple.
Why wasn’t the coach arrested? This is assault. Do we not arrest people for assault?
Ha ha ha ha ha. Not politicians.
Football; a game for gentlemen played by hooligans.
Rugby; a game for hooligans played by gentlemen.
Rugby is a bit gay tho innit.
Have you seen the haircuts of us soccer stars?
What does that mean?
I’m not the original poster, but when I’ve watched rugby, I see a lot of inappropriate touching. This is the reason I have stopped watching it.
In rugby there is no missy kissy when someone scores or a big super hug .
Thank the medinas!
Alliance slack anyway
Can’t even play football without some kind of bullshit in this country where we are becoming a shit hole.
Becoming? We’ve long been a shithole, but our do nothing elected officials living in their ivory towers, sit around pretending everything is A-OK.
It is laughable to expect that CIFA will do anything that is in the best interest of football. They are only concerned with those Clubs who supported them and their BS for the last how many donkey years?
Look at the grassroot programs – everything is in shambles because even the kids are fed up with the politricks played by CIFA
Players seem to have missed out on the Sportsman gene .
It should read, “Football refs ‘on’ strike….
Football refs strike [with a 2×4] after violent incident at match
Sorry this happened. Our reliable CIFA-supplied refs should be applauded for volunteering a considerable amount of their personal time/effort, and often at odd-hours. They’re as fair as they can be, and an essential part of youth football. However, I will note from personal observations that there are a very small minority of serving refs (maybe 2?) that without malice or ill-will, honestly don’t know even the fundamental rules of line calls; who gets possession on throw-ins, off-sides etc. These well-meaning refs should be thanked for their service nonetheless, but also reported to CIFA for a pre-game rule review rather than face fan shaming in critical matches. This hot-head Alliance coach should be quite simply banned from the league for being a child. Totally unacceptable. We can’t have violent hot-heads like this in the sport serving as trusted mentors to young people. There are enough bad examples already. PR-damaged CIFA should take a leadership position to ban this guy immediately.
How unfortunately. However, this is the result of 25 years of corruption of CIFA and the support from the football family to it. Recently the football community had the opportunity to make some changes, however they choose not to do so and elected a CIFA executive to keep the same group of officials at the helm making Jeff Webb still the de facto boss of the association. Has anyone heard a plan going forward from Mr. Lee Ramoon? Unfortunately for many years we have a group of so called coaches taking care our our young footballers who find easy to simply blame the referees for the shortfalls when it comes to their ability to coach and instill discipline on the players, one have to attend some of the CIFA premier league matches to witness the distasteful and embarrassing behavior of these coaches along with some of the player, CIFA is very much aware of this situation but chooses not to do anything about it not to upset their support. During one game one “coach” simply would not allow a game to go on and the match had to be suspended without any regard to the players, fan, official, etc. Did CIFA take any action? You guess?
The beautiful game. Ruined by idiots.
It’s the fault of the government. If they gave CIFA the money that they are accustomed to getting then they would have money to bribe the coaches to get them to stop hitting the referees! It’s called Jeff Webbonomics.
Dry
We have too many animals playing soccer here.
Imported animals
Yes, this is true. A very good Brazilian coach made a similar statement some years ago when he said Cayman boys are un-coachable. They have no discipline.
Teachers in the schools say the same thing about Cayman boys having no discipline because they never got it in the home. Instead, they were brought up with expressions that began with ” you are a Caymanian so…….”
What abt cayman girls lol…prejudice much?