Richard Scudamore And The Premier League Attempt To Reignite ‘Respect’ Campaign

Despite being announced on April Fool’s Day, Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore seemed deadly serious when he announce that it was time to kick the ‘Respect’ campaign into higher gear. For those unfamiliar with the initiative, ‘Respect’ is the Premier League’s attempt to tone down some of the vitriolic behaviour towards referees by players and managers, and should probably be so far considered something a little short of a breathtaking success.

The clubs unanimously backed the idea that at the start of next season we want to raise the bar. I think we do need to concentrate on the player and manager relationship with the referee this time, as every one of us knows that there have been elements of unacceptable behaviour.

As to what we think is unacceptable; it’s vitriolic abuse towards match officials and that has on occasions gone unpunished; the surrounding of referees is unacceptable; the goading of referees into trying to get opponents sanctioned we think is unacceptable; and also the undue criticism, where it spills over into questioning the referee’s integrity or his honesty is also unacceptable.

All that’s very well and good, but without actually defining the goals of the campaign and the path to take to achieve said goals, this does all sound like rather nebulous waffle. Instead of defining behaviour that’s unacceptable and enforcing byzantine rules inconstantly and fairly ineffectually, how about the Premier League law down some hard and fast regulations about behaviour towards referees while at the same time forcing the refereeing to move towards a higher standard? Does that really seem so hard?