Almost 50% of match officials surveyed by the Rugby Football Union have said they have been subjected to abuse in recent seasons – prompting the introduction of stricter punishments at all levels of the game including the Premiership, the Guardian can reveal.
Amid fears that the level of abuse is causing officials to leave the sport, the RFU has brought in “aggravated sanctions” for offenders, who will have their suspensions further extended by two, three or four weeks depending on the severity of the initial charge. The stricter punishments come after two of the RFU’s highest profile officials, Wayne Barnes and Tom Foley, cited abuse on social media as reasons for stepping away.
At the start of last season, the RFU sought to clamp down on the escalating problem of abuse, issuing all referees guidance on dealing with threats such as “I’m going to punch your lights out” and “I’m going to smash your car up”. But the union’s latest disciplinary statistics paint a bleak picture with match official abuse accounting for 18% of all cases last season. The largest category of offences was for dissent while 49% of around 1,200 officials surveyed in 2022 and 2023 said that they had been abused in the previous season.
As a result, officials implored the RFU to introduce stricter measures and the union has done so at the start of 2024. Players and coaches will still be charged with contravening rule 9.28 via the existing disciplinary framework but low‑end match official abuse offences are to be punished by an extra two‑week suspension, mid-range with an additional three weeks and top‑end with a further four weeks.
Match official abuse is defined as disrespecting the authority of a match official (dissent), verbal abuse, using threatening actions or words towards match officials, making physical contact with match officials and physical abuse of a match official. The RFU insists that the vast majority of cases relate to disrespect and that incidents of physical abuse are extremely rare but is adamant that the level of abuse is “unacceptable”.
David Barnes, the RFU’s head of discipline, told the Guardian: “The majority of players and coaches are very respectful of the match official but we do have people who think it’s appropriate to challenge them and disrespect them and in worst cases abuse them. Nearly 20% of our cases relate to this and we need to address it. As a game we can’t sit here and say there’s nothing wrong.
“The scale of the problem is that nearly one in five cases relate to a volunteer who is putting on a game for others. We also know that a lot of cases aren’t reported. Sometimes it’s resolved on the field but the 18% is an underestimate of the actual problem in the game.
“We feel it’s right to add an additional deterrent to all sanctions to try and reduce some of these issues.”
Wayne Barnes retired from officiating after the World Cup final at the end of October, referencing the online abuse he had faced, while family members were also targeted. In December, Foley, who acted as the television match official for the World Cup final, announced he was stepping away from international rugby, having revealed that death threats had been aimed at him and his family since the tournament.
“I think if people think it’s acceptable to do it online, it naturally spreads into ‘real life’ if that’s the right term,” Barnes said. “The more people think it’s acceptable to make a derogatory comment about the performance of an official or their decision on social media or electronically, I think people think it’s also OK to say it in person. It’s probably to a lesser extent, people are less accountable online which is obviously one of the major issues but if people think it’s OK to challenge officials then I do think it leads to an increase.
“We are still seeing large numbers of people signing up for refereeing courses, it’s not like we’ve suddenly seen it drop off but people being abused is going to impact on recruitment and retention. Why would you want to give up your afternoon for that? We’re trying to encourage people into the game in line with our values and abusing referees certainly isn’t.”
