I have no problem with the booking but how can it be right to fine under 14s ten quid for a booking?Surely fines should start for adults .The game is supposed to encourage kids some people might not be able to afford fines .My piss is boiled

Don’t get booked then, s’not rocket surgery.

If the parents won’t do anything to encourage a sense of fair play among their offspring, the authorities will have to.

‘Bout time, tbh.

^ This exactly. Especially if it’s for a technical foul like dissent.

If they can’t afford the fine, tell them to cancel their Sky Sports package

Yeah fine them. It’ll come out the pocket of the idiot Dad who’s been shouting abuse the whole game.

The booking is meant to be the punishment. Additional fines is just stupid, and punishes those from the poorest families worst.

And despite what the football haters may think, most bookings are just mistimed tackles, not violent conduct.

Used to be £5 for a yellow and £10 for a red when I was a kid. As I grew up in Walsall and most of our matches were in the least desirable parts of the West Midlands, cards/fines were fairly regular.

I wonder if the refs will have targets for the most bookings. Or league tables even, maybe with trophies for the most money raised through fines…

We are talking kids thats the point before the haterz start .Its a hobby we are supposed to encourage kids everyone gets booked at some point thats the punishment, fining children is plain daft .It`s not a case of fair play as said above mistimed tackles happen all the time especially in the younger age groups .Some parents might not have the money spare to pay the fines .

I thought the fines were for the club?

At least they were for my eldest two – and this has been happening for years.

Having seen some regular appalling behaviour at some of my sons matches from the same players in the same teams, a fine seems spot on to me. The value of the fine can be debated but I don’t think the fine payers family wealth or lack there of should be considered.

I also think the behaviour of the pro’s should looked at. They all wear the ‘Respect’ arm bands and the ‘fair play’ armbands but behave like animals, dissent being the most disgusting.

Start from the top, work down and dish out punishment to offenders where appropriate, no matter what their age.

I like the idea of monetarising fouls. £10 to kick some kid you don’t like up in the air is a bargain.

Having said that, the quality of refs when I played as a kid was so dodgy I wouldn’t be happy paying £10 for the Random Cards, when mortal-kombat style death moves were just free kicks.

The punishment is the booking and threat of a sending off not fiscal !

Does sort of serve to undermine the idea of football being a sport for all IMO.

If fines have to be had I’d dial it down to a £5 fine for a red, stern warning to go with a yellow. They’re kids FFS, why does this sort of punative bollocks need to start so early in life? Just serves to suck a bit more of the fun out of childhood.

There’s a few middle-class prejudices on show above by the looks of things…

cookeaa – Member
They’re kids FFS, why does this sort of punative bollocks need to start so early in life?

So you never punish your kids when they break the rules?
Try and teach them right from wrong?

Just serves to suck a bit more of the fun out of childhood.

Not much fun being the kid who gets kicked up in the air every weekend because some little git’s dad has encouraged him to make up for a lack of skill with violence.

There’s a few middle-class prejudices on show above by the looks of things…

So encouraging fair play & honesty is a trait confined to the middle class is it?

Having seen some regular appalling behaviour at some of my sons matches from the same players in the same teams, a fine seems spot on to me. The value of the fine can be debated but I don’t think the fine payers family wealth or lack there of should be considered.

Sending off and suspension from matches is the way to deal with that.

So encouraging fair play & honesty is a trait confined to the middle class is it?

No, but encouraging rules that can you can buy your way out of, as long as you have enough money is.

No, but encouraging rules that can you can buy your way out of with enough money is.

Eh?
According to you they’d be suspended anyway.
So how can they ‘buy their way out’?

So you never punish your kids when they break the rules?
Try and teach them right from wrong?

Thats what yellow and red cards are for !

Sending off and suspension from matches is the way to deal with that.

Problem is there is no cumulative approach to recording offences.
Seriously. Some of the stuff that goes on is awful from parents an players. I am talking Under 12’s. At that age the boys know what they are doing and what us right it wrong. The parents know the rules they are playing to when they sign the boys up.

My point is they are yellow carding and in some cases red carding players of that age group but it is not having any effect on the way those players behave at the next game.

i have never seen a scale of fines on a signing on sheet .

In my experience kids have to go some to get booked- mistimed tackles didn’t get booked in my lads games at 14 years – only bookings I saw were for dissent or serious pre- meditated fouls – like punches I kid you not!
For these a fine is totally justified imo

In that case, offences should be cumulative and result in bans.

The fines are all shown on your local FA website..or they are in Staffordshire

And perhaps a fine means the lad won’t be able to change his boots for the third time in a season just because Rooney has been paid to change his!

I run a kid’s football team and had a running battle with my local league last year for several £5 fines for not filling out the results sheet correctly.

One fine was for the opposition not marking down the goalscorers on the results sheet.

I cannot believe that the leagues enforce the petty fines for kid’s football, no-one gets paid for doing it and the money comes out of the team’s pot and could have been spent buying kit for the kids.

I threatened to take it to the press and was virtually bullied into not doing so.

I almost single handedly run the team and at the end of the match I have to talk to the kids and get the results sheet sorted, take the goals down, pick up litter, find lost balls etc etc and the leagues then fine you because you have not marked which kid scored a goal (plus other petty infringements).

It is one of the reasons why I have said I am stepping down at the end of this season (after 7 years).

Eskay – feel for you, really. Without you and your ilk these clubs would fold.

To others – middle class prejudices my **** arse. After i got toobadly injured to play on, I refereed at local level for 6 years. In the end I packed in because of the abuse you got from players, supporters, etc. Cards and the ‘threat’ of suspension made **** all difference, they’d play the following week under an assumed name if needs be. The only thing that made a difference was financial, with the clubs having to administer the fines. The most effective case was a club that many in my refs association refused to officiate at. In the end the league threatened to kick them out, so the club brought in a rule that if a player got booked for a technical offence like dissent, everyone else on the pitch also got fined by the club. Amazing how they can control themselves when it’s their mates they are letting down.

And as for kids football. Very quickly I refused to do it, because being given shit by kids, and then being threatened by their parents when you took action, screw that.

Yes, the respect campaign has to happen at top level but it has to happen at grass roots too. We all talk about it yet when it starts to happen, we don’t like it. Maybe your kid has been caught out by circumstance, but there’s plenty out there that are transgressing week in, week out, and don’t give a ****. If there was no fine, just cards and the ‘threat’ of suspension which never happens, the clubs that don’t control their players properly will have even less to answer to, and unfortunately they are dragging the good clubs with them.

And perhaps a fine means the lad won’t be able to change his boots for the third time in a season just because his feet have grown so much he has gone from a 9 to a 12 this year !!At 14 years old as well !!

Regarding bookings loads of the refs our boys get are very young some are good any some book at the drop of a hat with little thought

I can sympathise with that point. Sadly it’s another aspect of officiating today. Everyone wants consistency, but they also want refs to exercise discretion, and the two are not easily compatible. ‘Oh come on ref, you’re not booking me for that are you? Last week the ref didn’t’. So the authorities from FIFA down now dictate exactly what is and isn’t a card offence. So the youngsters, maybe with ambitions to make it in Reffing, apply the laws as per the book* because they can’t change week on week for when there may be an assessor visiting.

I reckoned I had a grasp on what was nasty vs what was unintentional based on playing at a decent level for 20 odd years, but when the laws dictate based on facts rather than ‘intent’ you have to apply the laws. As a result I’d have on average 4 or 5 disciplinary reports to write each weekend, whereas other refs would either avoid issuing cards, or worse use cards on the pitch but never bother sending the reports in, leading to the usual post match conversation where the blokes who’s spent the last 90 minutes spoiling your afternoon now wants to buy you a pint and talk you out of sending the report in.

* the book = the loaf, laws of association football. You can download off the Fifa website. I assume you’ve read it and therefore understand the international board decisions on how to apply the laws regarding foul play?

Not sure how you can penalise financially one player when it’s a team game and fouls are part of it. If it is to be applied it has to be against the team. Sometimes you just have to foul whether it is going in hard on someone to stop them physically bulling your team or a clinical foul to prevent a goal scoring opportunity. Also refs get it wrong too much, so players will push the limits.

They get it wrong far less than players do. I read somewhere, on average 95+% of decisions made are correct, yet a side that has 75 or 80% pass completion rate is doing brilliantly.