The names Yarnton Blues and Abingdon Town don’t mean much to most football fans, but to anyone associated with Cumnor Minors under-18s, the team I have represented for four years, they stir bitterness, hatred and memories of more sustained bruises than a rodeo after a bull-fight gone wrong.
Youth football boasts many plus-sides, from offering kids the chance to improve fitness to helping to discover the next England international, but when it is goes wrong it can turn farcical. Most teams treat each other with respect, turn up to matches every Sunday to play football, try to win fairly and enjoy themselves, but Yarnton and Abingdon are two huge exceptions. If the ball went missing in a match, their players wouldn’t notice. Their eyes would remain firmly fixed on the opposition’s legs even if a bomb exploded next to them.
This is the story of two teams who cheated, bullied and disgraced football’s name, who made the long car journey for the Cumnor players a complete waste of time when the sides met. This is the story of two referees who allowed their sides to get away with murder, who put the safety of the Cumnor players at serious risk by purposely not giving decisions against the teams they were part of. This is also the story of terrible decision-making by the FA, of England’s footballing authorities docking points off a team who justifiably walked off the pitch after being offered a boxing match rather than a football match on the pitch.
My thighs are only just beginning to recover from the game against Abingdon two weeks ago; such was the violent nature to their style of play. I received more stamps than the Royal Mail from their centre-halves. Every time the ball was hacked clear, their defenders would threaten to break the legs of any of Cumnor players willing to go near them.
Those threatening words could have easily become reality on numerous occasions, as they swiped us down time after time before demanding us “to get up you pussy.” As Cumnor players complained during half-time about the violence they had faced during the first period, the Abingdon assistant-manager overheard, replying that “this is big boy’s football now ain’t it? You’ve gotta take the physical side of it.” Yes, but there is a difference between muscling someone off the ball and stamping on them when the ball is at the other end of the pitch.
The kind of violent bullying Cumnor players were subjected to should never be allowed on a football pitch, and it is the responsibility of one man in black to make sure of that. The young referee did not do this against Abingdon though, and we should have known he wouldn’t before the game had even started. As the players filed into their positions before kick-off, the referee could be seen joking and laughing with the Abingdon players, clearly on first-name terms with them. Never a good sign.
It became blatantly clear as the game progressed that the referee would not be giving many decisions against Abgindon, no matter how vile their challenges were. He was simply too scared to blow his whistle in favour of Cumnor, threatened by the abuse he would receive from his friends if he let the other team get away with winning.
As Cumnor appealed for two stonewall penalties during the match, one for a scything, late tackle and one for climbing on top of a player and pushing him to the ground, the referee remained hesitant, bottling the decisions in fear of the 11 monsters masquerading as Abingdon footballers.
When one particularly nasty centre-half began to approach a Cumnor player late in the second half, appearing to offer him a fight amid a swirl of vitriol, the referee finally responded to the desperate pleas from Cumnor to take action, reaching tentatively for a yellow card before nervously holding it aloft. He then received the biggest barrage of abuse from the player that I have ever heard in my life. Any other referee would have immediately brandished a red card and the Abingdon player knew it. Though probably without a GCSE to his name, he was obviously sharp enough to pick up from past matches that the referee was scared to penalise such foul-mouthed rants in his direction from Abingdon players.
The referee seemed to want to give the correct decisions, seemed to want the game to be won by the best team rather than refereeing decisions, but he just couldn’t face being the subject of vicious abuse from players he knew well. It became clear how well when he joined the team photo at the end of the match, standing alongside the two linesman. Then everything fitted together for the Cumnor players, confirming that we had been well and truly cheated and that the FA should never let members of a team referee them in a match.
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