Referee Dwayne, who revealed only his first name to Sky Sports, decided to quit officiating having received threats and racial abuse after abandoning a game in Yorkshire. He had awarded a red card to an FC Panda player, who refused to quit the playing field. The player was sent off for excessive dissent.
In Spite of requesting the manager to take the player off, there was no progress and Dwayne called the game off. From players coming to scream at his face and even spitting on his shirt, things unravelled quite terribly in the coming few minutes.
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Daryl, who has been a referee for close to nine years as mentioned in Sky Sports, said that the players started to physically assault him. He was also punched by one of the players before he rushed back to the changing room. To avoid any confrontation, he decided not to react to the players and filed a complaint later.
“Walking back to the changing room, I had a racist comment aimed towards me. I heard it and it makes your blood boil, but I just felt weak because it was one of those where I just had to walk past and just ignore it because if I turn round and confront it, it would have been a lot worse,”
he said.
The chairman of Panda responded to these allegations. He said that he was appalled upon hearing the accusations from Dwayne and said if any of the involved players are found guilty, they will not be playing for the club ever again.
He added that Panda is one of the most culturally inclusive clubs, with players from South Asia, Afro-Caribbean, and other backgrounds being a part of the franchise.
“If Dwayne has felt threatened in a game we played in, we would like to sit down with him and apologise face to face and move forward in a positive way together,”
the chairman stated.
The FA also has mentioned that the incident will be looked into, despite there being no reported incident of assault. They also reported that less than 0.01% of the amateur games played at the grassroots level include a properly reported incident of the assault, which makes it difficult for them to track the story.
However, the FA reaffirmed that even a single instance of racial abuse is one too many, and this incident will be investigated further.
