TERRY LEYDEN has expressed his concern at the ‘abuse’ given to and ‘lack of respect’ shown to referees in the Donegal League.
Leyden, the assistant secretary and the registrar of the Donegal League, delivered a short, but hard-hitting message to the AGM last night in Ballyare.
There were a total of 1,129 bookings in the 2015/16 season.
70 players were suspended for sending off offences, 94 players were banned having accumulated four bookings and five of those collected a second set of four yellow cards.
[adrotate group=”37″]Of the suspensions that will carry over until next season, two of them are by players who have been handed 12-month bans.
JP Byrne of Donegal Town FC and Reece Laird of Kildrum Tigers were handed the year-long suspensions towards the end of the season gone by following incidents involving officials.
“There is a lot of abuse and a lack of respect,” Mr Leyden said.
“Some of it has abated but, sadly, not all of it. The referees are doing a good job.
[adrotate group=”46″]“It’s not good that we have two players serving 12-month suspensions for incidents involving referees.
“We had one referee who was pushed and another who was spat at. Those types of incidents are simply not on.
“We need to go back to basics and remind our players that we’re playing football here and without referees we’d have no football.”
Arranmore United won the fair play award for the second year in a row, just staving off Ballybofey United, Letterbarrow Celtic and Eany Celtic to take that award.
There were a total of 32 transfers in the season gone by, a sizeable drop of 128 from the previous season, likely down to the Ulster Senior League’s switch back to the August-May calendar.
There were a total of 1,491 players registered in the Donegal League with 1,131 adult players registered in the Sunday League and 240 in the Saturday League with 120 underage players also listed.
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