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#Post#: 15908--------------------------------------------------
Re: Bobby Madley returns!
DIR By: nemesis
Date: February 19, 2020, 3:15 am
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--- Quote from: reflector link ---
>
> As long as his promotion (or otherwise) is determined solely
on merit, I don't think there should be any argument about that.
>
--- End Quote ---
That'd be a novelty!
#Post#: 15947--------------------------------------------------
Re: Bobby Madley returns!
DIR By: Referee99
Date: February 20, 2020, 2:45 am
---------------------------------------------------------
An interview with bobbly Madley from the Athletic
Bobby Madley has never spoken about this side of his life in
public and, now he feels ready to tell his story in full, he
wants to make the point that he is not looking for sympathy. He
makes that point several times, in fact, when plainly, it isn’t
easy for him to be starting a discussion about the mental health
of referees and how, on a personal level, depression brought him
to the darkest moments of his life.
There were times, he says, when he found himself wondering
whether it was worth carrying on and, though he avoids using the
specific word, he is talking about contemplating suicide. “I
haven’t gone into detail before about how deep it got for me and
how dark it became,” he says. “I didn’t want to do that because
I was worried I might be accused of over-dramatising or
sensationalising it.”
Ultimately, though, he knows it is important for him to speak
out when, until now, there has never really been any emphasis on
how referees cope with the considerable pressures of their
working lives and the culture in football that makes it the norm
for members of their profession to be demonised.
“It got as low as it could,” he says. “I was hiding something
inside. You know you’re having a tough time but you’re smiling
with people and telling yourself you must be all right. Then,
the moment the lights go out at night, your head comes alive.
I’d be sitting up at three in the morning, in tears, thinking
about everything, wondering what I could have done differently.
“I’d find myself going on Twitter to look through every post
that was about me. I was searching for that one positive line,
just one person to say, ‘Leave him alone, he’s a really nice
guy’ or ‘He doesn’t deserve this’. I was tormenting myself and,
of course, what you get on Twitter are people criticising you,
and worse.
“It just didn’t get better. It was pretty much every night that
I’d be up, crying, unable to sleep. It got to the stage where I
wasn’t feeling well. I was tired all the time. I did a fitness
test. I got halfway round and that’s the last I remember of it.
I woke up in an ambulance.
“I’d collapsed. I spent the night in hospital. They did lumbar
puncture, blood tests, everything. They thought I might have had
a bleed on the brain or a mini-stroke. In the end, they put it
down to stress. My body had shut down. Something inside my head
went, ‘You can’t do this any more’. That was probably the point
for me when it got really serious, when I thought, ‘I have to do
something and I can’t keep living this way’.”
Until then, Madley had always tried to convince himself that it
would pass. “Maybe it was a macho thing,” he says. “I was trying
to be a ‘man’ because there is that awful thing where you think
it is a sign of weakness to see a professional. In my head, I
was still telling myself I was a strong character because, on a
football pitch, you have to be strong. It took a long time — 14
months — for me to realise that I needed to do something about
it.”
Madley had been removed — sacked, to put it another way — from
the list of referees at the Professional Game Match Officials
Limited (PGMOL) in August 2018. He moved to Oslo where his
partner, Jenny, is a nurse and started refereeing lower-league
games. He learned the language. People congratulated him for
starting a new life. Inside, however, he was in turmoil. “I was
destroying myself,” he says.
It was Jenny who booked the appointment with a therapist. “It
changed my life,” he says. “I sat with him, I cried, and I
talked about the darkest thoughts I’d had.
“Did it [suicide] cross my mind? A few times, yes. ‘Would you
ever do you it?’ he asked me. And I said, ‘No, I’ve got two
kids. I would never do it.’ Yes, it was something that had gone
through my head but would I have ever done it? I know I
wouldn’t, 100 per cent. I told him that and he was pretty
ruthless. ‘Forget about it then,’ he said, ‘It’s off the table,
so move on’.
“I needed someone to be as brutal and frank about it. I needed
to hear those words — ‘Move on, it’s not an option, you’re not
going to do it’ — because there were times when it did feel like
the easiest option.
“That’s quite scary to look back on now. I’d never had
experience of anybody I knew being in that position and, maybe
being naive, I always used to think, ‘How could anyone do that
when they have kids and families?’ but I get it now. I can
understand. I was that low. The only thing keeping me going was
Jenny, who has been brilliant, and having a fantastic family.”
As you may have read recently, Madley will shortly be picking up
his career as a professional referee in England, starting
initially in the lower leagues, after being informed by the
PGMOL that it is willing to offer him a way back.
Madley is not proud of the story but it is one he will always
have to confront because of the way it has shaped his life. He
had been “fat-shamed”, to use his description, in a newspaper
article written by the former referee Mark Halsey. The headline
referred to him as “Blobby Bobby” and had left him feeling
self-conscious.
A man with a walking disability walked past his car and this is
the part that Madley will never be able to take back. He took a
six-second video on his phone and sent it to a friend with the
message, “Fuck me, I have a chance of winning the parents’ race
this year.”
The context is important (Madley had a running joke about
whether he was going to take part in the race) and it was
intended, he says, as self-deprecating humour. But he has never
hidden from the fact it was not a pleasant thing to do.
A while later, he had an argument with his friend and a memory
stick containing the video clip, along with an anonymous letter,
was sent to his bosses. Madley, who had been refereeing since
the age of 16, was called in for a disciplinary hearing and told
he was being let go. He was 32. As he says, he is not after
sympathy here — he knows he screwed up. He has always blamed
himself because of “my own regrettable, naive and stupid
actions”.
This is fundamentally the reason why he sank into depression
rather than anything to do with the usual stresses of the job or
the way a football referee, perhaps like no other job in sport,
is expected to endure abuse as part of their routine. Yet the
past 16 months have not just given him time to analyse his own
life but also the way referees, as a whole, are treated and the
culture that allows it to be their way.
Madley, like many of us, has been reading about Caroline Flack,
the English TV presenter who took her own life last weekend, and
what it tells us about today’s society. “It’s an absolute
tragedy,” he says. “It has been all over the news in Norway,
too, but it frustrates me because I see people writing all these
messages that ‘the press have to stop this’ and ‘social media
has to change’ but then I look back two weeks and the same
people think it’s absolutely fine to do this to a professional
referee.
“The mentality is: it’s not a human being, it’s a job, and it’s
OK to abuse someone in that job. But it’s not OK and it is a
human being. We’ve got to create some kind of society in
football where people think this is unacceptable.”
Earlier in his career, Madley’s old mates from Wakefield used to
play a game called “beat the Tweet” where they would search his
name on Twitter and email him some of the more vicious messages.
They found it amusing and strange that their friend, someone
they regarded as a normal, down-to-earth guy who loved football
and was good for the occasional pint, could be held up as a
figure of hate. Madley could laugh along most of the time — “I
had some really cruel mates” — but some of the messages were so
sinister, so incredibly malicious and over the top, that he has
kept them as examples of what referees have to endure.
One was from a Liverpool fan during an FA Cup tie at Crystal
Palace in 2015. “I hope the next time Robert Madley goes for a
shower, gas comes out instead of water,” it read.
Madley’s list of controversies — let’s face it, every referee
has a list — includes the sending-off of Fabricio Coloccini in a
Newcastle-Sunderland fixture. For that, there was another
barrage of hate. “Hope Bobby Madley goes home to find his whole
family dead,” read one message.
Sending off Coloccini during the Wear-Tyne derby brought further
abuse (Photo: Mark Runnacles/Getty Images)
Another came from a 15-year-old who found an account for
@robertmadley, assumed it was the referee, and sent a message
telling him to “have a bath in acid”.
Madley has been in touch with the recipient. “This poor guy
lives in Vermont. I spoke to him and he said he used to get
abuse every single weekend. I said, ‘Mate, you’ve got to get a
profile picture so people know it’s not me. You can’t just have
a Twitter egg’. He was getting the most horrific abuse and he
could never understand why.”
Ironically, Twitter has also been very good to Madley. The blog
he released on New Year’s Eve to explain the reasons why he had
lost his job, in the form of a long and cathartic mea culpa, was
seen by 600,000 people and “liked” almost 39,000 times. There
have been nearly 2,500 private messages and he has tried to
reply to each one. Some have criticised him and, again, he has
accepted that is justified. Others have shared stories about how
their own lives have been ruined by one silly, momentary error.
Some have left him in tears.
There is no doubt, however, that Madley has seen how social
media can work the other way. The wild rumours, for example,
when he was initially removed from the referees’ list. “I’m a
Huddersfield fan, Huddersfield being the Terriers, and I think
it was a Leeds fan who put out a comment that I was a ‘dog
botherer’. Then it just snowballed online.
“People were putting up pictures, quite inventive stuff, and
some of them were funny. But then people started tagging in the
police and the RSPCA and it started to get out of hand. All of a
sudden, it was ‘trending’ number nine worldwide. Suddenly,
people were saying they had seen a video and that I should be
arrested. Then, there were animal rights campaigners saying, ‘I
know where he lives’. I ended up needing police protection, all
from a nonsense rumour.”
At one stage, Madley was in the crowd to watch Yorkshire take on
Nottinghamshire in a T20 cricket match. He is a proud
Yorkshireman who still holds the record for Ossett Town juniors
(91 goals in a season) and was once an up-and-coming player in
the youth systems at Barnsley and Leeds United. But that day at
Headingley, he found out, the hard way, what it had done to his
reputation.
“I was in my Yorkshire shirt. It was a packed crowd and two
other Yorkshire fans started making these comments. I don’t
think they were drunk — they just thought they were being big
and clever,” he says.
“I lost my head that day and it nearly ended in a physical
encounter. I’m normally very composed but I just thought, ‘No,
I’m not coming to watch a cricket game to be verbally abused.
I’m not willing to let these people try to embarrass me.’ It was
actually some Nottinghamshire fans who came over and told these
boys ‘enough’s enough’. It was a crazy moment but that’s the
power of social media. It can be brilliant but, as we have seen
recently, it can destroy people.”
The message he would like to convey is a simple one: be kinder,
remember that referees are human, too. He is not asking for an
amnesty and he understands there will be times when players and
fans are so caught up in the sport they will lose their temper.
“People will shout at you during the game but then you go into
the bar after the game and they are the first people to buy you
a pint,” he says. “Football creates that emotion and, in a
strange way, it’s one of the things I like. But there is a line.
People have to know when to stop because what’s worse is that
this is happening to 15 and 16-year-olds. It filters down.”
Earlier this week, he met a 15-year-old referee, Rhiannon
Stevens, who was verbally abused by two adults during a game and
took the case to the Football Association, leading to the
offenders being banned. Madley presented her with a shirt —
#lovethewhistle — on behalf of Ref Support, a charity which does
a lot of fine work to help protect match officials. He had flown
in from Oslo to give a talk at Paulton Rovers, from the Southern
League, and there was a lot of warmth towards him from an
audience comprising many current and former referees.
One game in particular is ingrained in Madley’s mind:
Bournemouth versus West Ham from Boxing Day, 2017. It was a 3-3
draw but Bournemouth’s last goal, scored by Callum Wilson in the
fourth minute of stoppage time, should never have been allowed
and another of their players, Simon Francis, ought to have been
sent off for a high kick on Cheikhou Kouyate. Madley saw it at
the time as a yellow-card offence, for reasons he cannot fully
explain, and there was no VAR at the time to correct his
mistake.
“It’s strange as a referee because you don’t remember your good
games,” Madley says. “You remember the bad ones, though. It was
hard. You don’t need Match of the Day to tell you. There are no
excuses. I didn’t referee well that day and the drive home…
well, it was tough. You drive on your own because the rules
state you have to. It was five hours back to where I lived in
the north. It was snowing. I was talking to my mates and my
brother [Andrew is another PGMOL referee]. I always listen to
the radio, the phone-ins, and I was getting crucified.
“I was being destroyed on national radio and trying to
concentrate on a five-hour drive. It puts you in a difficult
position to keep your head straight and get home safely. I sulk
for three days and I’m probably a nightmare to live with. Just
because you referee a Premier League game, it doesn’t mean your
skin is that thick you can shut it out. But then you have to
move on because you have another game.”
It is easy to understand why some referees might not be able to
take this level of scrutiny. The PGMOL has two psychologists
and, though Madley did not take up the offer, he will always be
grateful that he was told he could speak to them even after
losing his job.
He, in turn, has tried to use his Twitter account to show that
referees are real people with real feelings and perhaps dissuade
supporters from thinking that abusing them is accepted as the
norm. “I’ve made a point that I will never throw an ex-colleague
under the bus,” he says. “I’ll never come out and start saying,
‘Rhat’s a terrible decision’. But there’s always a reason for a
decision, even a mistake, so I’ve tried to use Twitter to help
educate and bring football fans and referees closer together.”
For the record, he doesn’t look blobby close-up. He is fit,
athletic and raring to go, and perhaps there is a lesson for
Halsey here, too. “I have no issue with referees stepping away
and taking roles in the media,” Madley says. “But talk about
people’s decisions. As soon as you start getting personal about
people’s body image, saying they don’t look fit enough and they
are not preparing properly, that hurts because the guys writing
it know how hard, physically, you have to train. That’s when
ex-referees lose a bit of respect among current referees.”
He will have to come off Twitter soon because PGMOL contracts
prohibit referees from having social media accounts. Initially,
he will fly in and out for matches but the plan is to move back
later in the year. At that point, we will not be hearing too
much from Bobby Madley and, after so many headlines, he says he
is looking forward to being anonymous again. Until he makes a
mistake, anyway.
More than anything, though, he hopes his words might resonate if
there are any other referees who are struggling to cope. “If I
can give any advice to anyone, it would be simple,” he says.
“Just talk — don’t bottle it up.” It is good advice. And perhaps
it might also persuade the rest of us to be a little kinder,
too.
#Post#: 15960--------------------------------------------------
Re: Bobby Madley returns!
DIR By: bmb
Date: February 20, 2020, 7:25 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Very candid and hard reading interview.
If there is one good thing that can come out from this whole
thing is that the mental health of our referees may be taken
more seriously by the powers that be and us. It is a different
world we live in now to the one I and many of us who post on
here grew up in. We didn't have social media to contend with and
all that brings with it, it has many benefits but many curses as
well. As referees we didn't have 24+ HD cameras beaming our
every move to millions, even if we did make it anywhere near the
top of the ladder, one flakey camera from the BBC world service
if you were really unlucky and the whole mindset was different,
referees were not the enemy of football back then, as they are
portrayed by the media these days. If it makes eve 1 person stop
and think before they tweet/post something then that is a
positive, imo.
#Post#: 15981--------------------------------------------------
Re: Bobby Madley returns!
DIR By: Whistleblower
Date: February 20, 2020, 3:52 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
A very interesting and salutary piece by Madley. I hope he finds
some purpose and fulfilment in the years ahead. I do rather feel
for the poor guy in Vermont as well. I was once mistaken for
someone else and received some vile emails which, although
unpleasant, were so lacking in intelligence not to mention
decent use of language that I could fairly easily consign them
to the place where moronic outpourings belong.
It all goes to confirm my instinct to have nothing whatsoever to
do with social media.
#Post#: 15984--------------------------------------------------
Re: Bobby Madley returns!
DIR By: reflector
Date: February 21, 2020, 1:46 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: Whistleblower link ---
>
> A very interesting and salutary piece by Madley. I hope he
finds some purpose and fulfilment in the years ahead. I do
rather feel for the poor guy in Vermont as well. I was once
mistaken for someone else and received some vile emails which,
although unpleasant, were so lacking in intelligence not to
mention decent use of language that I could fairly easily
consign them to the place where moronic outpourings belong.
>
> It all goes to confirm my instinct to have nothing whatsoever
to do with social media.
>
--- End Quote ---
I know what you are getting at, Whisteblower, but is not RTR in
fact part of what many would regard as social media, albeit a
very civilised example?
#Post#: 15988--------------------------------------------------
Re: Bobby Madley returns!
DIR By: Whistleblower
Date: February 21, 2020, 3:24 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: reflector link ---
>
> [quote author=Whistleblower link=topic=1372.msg15981#msg15981
date=1582235540]
> A very interesting and salutary piece by Madley. I hope he
finds some purpose and fulfilment in the years ahead. I do
rather feel for the poor guy in Vermont as well. I was once
mistaken for someone else and received some vile emails which,
although unpleasant, were so lacking in intelligence not to
mention decent use of language that I could fairly easily
consign them to the place where moronic outpourings belong.
>
> It all goes to confirm my instinct to have nothing whatsoever
to do with social media.
>
--- End Quote ---
I know what you are getting at, Whisteblower, but is not RTR in
fact part of what many would regard as social media, albeit a
very civilised example?
[/quote]
That's an interesting point reflector and is something I have
thought about myself. I would describe RTR as an online forum
rather than social media, however I accept the difference in
definition is a moot point.
Without wishing to flatter in order to deceive, what makes RTR
so very good is the excellent way in which it is moderated.
Anything untoward of a personal nature is jumped on pretty
darned quickly. We owe our Moderators a great deal of gratitude.
#Post#: 15991--------------------------------------------------
Re: Bobby Madley returns!
DIR By: bmb
Date: February 21, 2020, 4:55 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: Whistleblower link ---
>
> [quote author=reflector link=topic=1372.msg15984#msg15984
date=1582271195]
> [quote author=Whistleblower link=topic=1372.msg15981#msg15981
date=1582235540]
> A very interesting and salutary piece by Madley. I hope he
finds some purpose and fulfilment in the years ahead. I do
rather feel for the poor guy in Vermont as well. I was once
mistaken for someone else and received some vile emails which,
although unpleasant, were so lacking in intelligence not to
mention decent use of language that I could fairly easily
consign them to the place where moronic outpourings belong.
>
> It all goes to confirm my instinct to have nothing whatsoever
to do with social media.
>
--- End Quote ---
I know what you are getting at, Whisteblower, but is not RTR in
fact part of what many would regard as social media, albeit a
very civilised example?
[/quote]
That's an interesting point reflector and is something I have
thought about myself. I would describe RTR as an online forum
rather than social media, however I accept the difference in
definition is a moot point.
Without wishing to flatter in order to deceive, what makes RTR
so very good is the excellent way in which it is moderated.
Anything untoward of a personal nature is jumped on pretty
darned quickly. We owe our Moderators a great deal of gratitude.
[/quote]
We are an online forum but it is still a form of social media.
The more popular definition, if you like, of social media would
be twitter/facebook/instagram etc which I suspect is what you
have the common sense to keep away from!
Thank you for the comments regarding the moderating. We have
been lucky and have put together a great admin team who deal
with many issues before the "report post" email even arrives in
my email box! I'm grateful to the time and dedication each of
them give to the forum. We are also lucky though with the vast
majority of our posters, especially those of you who have been
around a few years, you know the rules, you know what we will
not tolerate and you don't even bother going there! Some of you
may sail close to the wind at times but it's pretty rare lines
get crossed. Sometimes we have to whip some newer posters into
shape so to speak and educate them into what is and is not
acceptable, they either learn quickly or they get their coat
handed to them. There are a few of our posters who will also
contact me via other channels, twitter, facebook messenger,
whatsapp, text, email, smoke signal etc. to alert me to a
potential problematic post, which I am very appreciative of, as
it means I can get online asap to deal with it and limit who
will have seen the post, although most of the time one of the
team have beaten me to it and left me a note in our staff area
to let me know!
#Post#: 15994--------------------------------------------------
Re: Bobby Madley returns!
DIR By: QuoCob
Date: February 21, 2020, 5:20 am
---------------------------------------------------------
I equate these 'sedate' forums as like a group of like minded
people meeting in a pub and having a conversation about a mutual
topic over a beer or whatever is your tipple of choice.
There is an opportunity to discuss, debate, disagree and argue
but if you wouldn't say something in that environment, then it
shouldn't be said on here behind the anonymity of your chosen
pseudonym.
#Post#: 16024--------------------------------------------------
Re: Bobby Madley returns!
DIR By: Matt
Date: February 22, 2020, 9:28 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: reflector link ---
>
> [quote author=Whistleblower link=topic=1372.msg15981#msg15981
date=1582235540]
> A very interesting and salutary piece by Madley. I hope he
finds some purpose and fulfilment in the years ahead. I do
rather feel for the poor guy in Vermont as well. I was once
mistaken for someone else and received some vile emails which,
although unpleasant, were so lacking in intelligence not to
mention decent use of language that I could fairly easily
consign them to the place where moronic outpourings belong.
>
> It all goes to confirm my instinct to have nothing whatsoever
to do with social media.
>
--- End Quote ---
I know what you are getting at, Whisteblower, but is not RTR in
fact part of what many would regard as social media, albeit a
very civilised example?
[/quote]
No... a forum isn't social media.
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