A friend’s father holds a Wimbledon record that will surely never be broken: he was the target of the greatest number of f-bombs from John McEnroe on Centre Court. His crime? Calling a Stefan Edberg ace, when it missed the line by a hair’s breadth. In the 1991 quarter-finals. When McEnroe was two sets and a break down. And when his temper was already somewhere between boiling point and nuclear fissure.
You can guess the rest. “You have got to be kidding me,” McEnroe screamed, wrongly indicating the serve was a foot wide. Then came the usual glares and stares, tuts and head shakes. Before, two points later, he completely lost it. “You effing son of an effing bitch. I’m going to effing do you and, if you report me, I’ll effing do you again.”
That was the PG-version, as related to me. Yet while McEnroe’s words were not picked up by the umpire or the BBC, ITN’s cameras at the back of the court caught it all and broadcast a 10-second clip on the evening news with a “bleep blotting out six words – the same word”, as the Guardian reported. The next day McEnroe was fined $10,000.
However, this isn’t just a story about Superbrat but of repeating acts: of players bullying and intimidating officials, and mostly getting away with it. Indeed, in the Netflix series Break Point, which relives Nick Kyrgios’s journey to Wimbledon’s final last year, bad behaviour is given a gloss even Farrow and Ball would appreciate.
I was courtside last year for Kyrgios’s opening match against Paul Jubb and it wasn’t pleasant. He called one female line judge the “worst I have ever seen” before accusing her of being a “snitch” for going to the umpire. He ranted about two others with silver hair being “people in their 90s, they can’t see the ball”. And, for good measure, he also spat at a spectator. Essentially it was McEnroe’s playbook with an Australian accent.
But while McEnroe’s fine was more than a third of his overall Wimbledon prize money of $29,912 in 1991, Kyrgios’s repeated violations over the fortnight ended up costing him just £14,500 – barely 1% of his £1m-plus tournament earnings. That was not specifically Wimbledon’s fault, as the fines are set by the sport. Even so, it was hard to escape the sense of authorities unwilling to clamp down hard.
This isn’t just a tennis problem, however. Sport as a whole is continuing to downplay how much referees are insulted, assaulted, and end up leaving the game.
The numbers make for sobering reading. The academic Jamie Cleland, who has conducted detailed research into abuse of officials, has found that 60% of British football referees experience verbal abuse every other game and 19% have experienced some form of physical abuse. In one case a referee with more than 20 years’ experience reported being attacked from behind and kicked repeatedly while unconscious. And while the offender was prosecuted, he received only a suspended prison sentence.
Even in supposedly more gentlemanly sports, things are getting worse. A 2019 study of more than 1,000 referees and umpires, for instance, found that 49% of rugby union and 45% of cricket match officials experienced abuse at least twice every season – and around half believed that abuse had increased.
Cleland, who teaches at the University of South Australia, has also found something else that is disturbing: that bad behaviour from professionals trickles down into the amateur game – with younger players influenced to act disruptively after seeing their heroes act badly.
What’s more, when there is leniency towards abusive players at elite levels it also normalises such behaviour for those watching. “It is hard to envisage few other scenarios across society where such abuse would be permitted,” says Cleland. “But in the world of sport, where referees are outsiders, it seems that directing one’s fury towards a referee is fair game.”
All of us are to blame for this – including fans, parents and the media. Yet a new study, titled Referee Abuse, Intention to Quit, and Well-Being – which spoke to 900 football referees in England and Canada – found that abuse reduced officials’ happiness off the pitch as well as increasing their intention to quit.
“It follows that a failure to cut out the abuse of referees can be understood as a duty of care failing by association football authorities not protecting referees,” the authors note.
The problem is that football, in particular, has an ingrained cultural problem with referees. Just look at how José Mourinho treated Anthony Taylor at the Europa League final – and the reaction of Roma fans to Taylor at the airport the next day. Or, indeed, the rise in red and yellow cards for abuse of officials across English football in recent seasons.
As Cleland points out, we all know what needs to be done: far tougher penalties for abusers, better respect campaigns at elite and grassroots level, and greater support for referees.
It should go without saying that far more of us also need to get a sense of perspective. Sport is just sport. Nothing more. There are infinitely more serious things that we could be getting angry about than a bad decision.
As for my friend’s father – well, while the McEnroe incident didn’t bother him massively at the time, it did lead to a corrosion of his love of tennis. For him it showed that players had the whip hand and weren’t afraid to use it. More than 30 years later, little has changed.
