You Don’t Want to Be a Referee in Guyana

By: Laurie | February 25th, 2008

We’ve got referee attack incidents all over the place today. But if the Aussies are getting suspensions for wienie little high fives, in Guyana they take their referee abuse a little more seriously. There have been four instances in the last month.

In one incident, the Guyana Defense Force football team was suspended indefinitely.

…it was decided to suspend the GDF football team after an off field incident had brought a premature end to Tuesday night’s matches in the Banks Premium Beer Cup tournament.

According to reports, a rank of the GDF, Roland D’Aguiar, who is currently banned by the GFA following an incident with a referee last year was spotted in the venue by an official. He was requested to leave the venue but allegedly refused to comply with the instruction at which point the officiating referee reportedly walked off the field and out of the ground.

Okay, first thing? I really don’t mean to make light of any of this, because referee abuse is a serious problem. But the “Banks Premium Beer Cup tournament”? How awesome is that? If you won, you’d get to go home and tell your friends, “Yeah, we won the Beer Cup.”

Second thing? According to another report, the GDF was suspended because they have “a history of bringing the game of football into disrepute.”

I love this reason. I find great entertainment value in the word “disrepute” when it’s applied to everyday events like football. I think the “bring the game into disrepute” standard should be adopted worldwide and applied liberally.

(Yes, I am easily amused. It’s been a long month.)

The most recent event was more serious. A referee in Kourou was attacked by several players after he awarded a penalty to the opposing team and gave the offending player his second yellow card. The expelled player then spit on the ref (class act, eh?), and his teammates started throwing punches.

The referee took shelter in the locker room and the match was suspended. He was taken to the hospital and later released, but according to his assistant he needed to return to the hospital the following day.

If the Aussies can give nine-month suspensions for wimpy high fives with the refs, let’s hope Guyana can respond proportionately.

Or eventually all that disrepute will mean an end to the Beer Cups. And that would be a tragedy.