When the little gentleman warned himself, mimicking with his fists and his footwork a boxing fight worthy of the XIXand century, a shiver of shame ran down my spine.
Posted May 15
He had just punched a 17-year-old assistant referee in the face, after insulting him with enough insistence and vehemence that a parent had time to film the scene.
Luckily the linesman, who was a head taller than him, didn’t have time to send him flying. Another parent tackled the assailant to the ground. You have no doubt seen the images, captured by a cell phone last weekend in Dollard-des-Ormeaux. They were broadcast on a loop at the beginning of the week, on all the channels.
Learning that it was a grandfather who came to watch his 14-year-old grandson play soccer didn’t help matters. No more than being informed, of his own admission, that he is a retired teacher, in a letter of apology which appeared to have been copied from the Dummies’ Guide: How to Avoid Lawsuits in Three Easy Steps.
A grandpa who thinks he’s Sugar Ray Leonard, who lands a right hook at an underage referee paid minimum wage for a decision in a U-15 soccer game. And who describes in a letter his gesture as a “moment of bewilderment”. The class (I’m not talking about his former workplace).
I would put my hand in the fire that it was for an offside. Assistant referees almost always get scolded for offside in soccer. And three-quarters of the time, this is due to the fact that the spectator cannot distinguish an offside of erythematous and oedematous, pruriginous, fleeting and migratory papules, affecting the integument. You don’t know what it is? Me niether. It’s Chinese. Like offside for most parents in the stands at their child’s soccer games.
They didn’t see the ball call, they didn’t pay attention to the precise moment the ball was distributed or the full-back who was dragging their feet, but because they see the team striker opponent suddenly alone with the ball, the way clear towards the goal, they decree with conviction that there is offside. I’ve heard it all my life. When I was a player, when I was a coach, when I was a referee, at my son’s games, two weeks ago again at the Saputo stadium.
Sometimes it’s not offside. Sometimes it’s a rough tackle or a hand that the referee misses. Sometimes bloodshed has another origin, in another sport, in another context. When I was 16, my coach of soccer physically attacked my coach hockey, after a provincial championship game, because he felt his son hadn’t had enough ice time. An adult, supposed to lead by example.
The phenomenon of the parent – or grandparent – who loses the North is not new. But referees increasingly seem to be paying the price. Last month in Mississippi, the referee at a 12-year-old girl’s softball game was attacked from behind in the parking lot by a spectator who was wearing a t-shirt that read “Mother of the Year” on it. .
In Georgia, also in April, a referee was attacked by parents and 14-year-old players from a church-affiliated basketball team. His injuries required 30 stitches. And in a hockey game in Colorado a few weeks ago, a father attacked a young referee by spraying disinfectant in his face.
In the United States, bad parental behavior is attributed to 75% of referee resignations in school sports (in high school), according to a 2017 survey by the National Association of Sports Officials. There is also a shortage of referees in Quebec, noted a year ago my colleague Alexandre Pratt, speaking of minor hockey.
Events like the one featuring the Will Smith of Saint-Laurent are not likely to encourage young people to become referees.
The crux of the problem of “stand rage,” which has long been established by psychologists, is those parents who project onto their children or make up for the shattered dreams of their own youth in sports.
My very first job was a soccer referee, from 14 to 16 years old, in the West Island where the Bruce Lee of the grandpas happened two Saturdays ago. I quickly understood that it was a thankless role, for which one is constantly criticized when mistakes are inevitable, and very rarely thanked for one’s efforts and good faith.
This experience allowed me, from adolescence, to take full measure of the distressing extent of human stupidity. Parents mad with rage, who often don’t know much about sport, but who despite everything improvise themselves as experts, and who regress to childhood by uttering insults and sometimes even thinly veiled threats to the referees, coaches and even players. Forgetting that it is, precisely, a children’s game.
On courts from western Canada to the American east coast via Dollard-des-Ormeaux, where I have often played, where I have seen my son play too, I have never seen a parent ridicule himself so much than this failed pugilist of a grandfather ex-teacher. But I have seen many fathers and mothers lose their sense of proportion, of their responsibilities and of the most elementary civility. And I have been, more often than not, ashamed of my neighbour.