Marcel Aries is a neuro-intensivist at MUMC+ and the founder of the Brain Battle Fund. Eva van Agt is a professional cyclist riding for the French WorldTour team FDJ-Suez. In this dual column, they bring their worlds together: elite sport and brain health. They reflect on what strikes them in their work and in their shared commitment to fighting brain injury.
I’ve just heard on the Dutch children’s news that Romania is introducing a ‘black card’. Not for players, but for parents who get a bit too carried away on the touchline. If you get one, the match is abandoned there and then, with no chance of restarting. Game over for both teams, all because of one person on the sidelines who can’t keep their cool.
I occasionally referee my son’s under-12s matches, and I’m constantly amazed by the behaviour on the touchline. At the last home game, things got particularly out of hand. The opposition’s coaches were swearing and shouting, convinced, of course, that the referee was getting everything wrong. One grandad who’d travelled to support his grandson made it abundantly clear, through frantic gestures and loud shouting, that I was the worst referee on the planet.
Working in healthcare, I’m used to seeing people lose their cool. Families can get pretty worked up in emotional situations. But it does seem as though, somewhere every weekend, there’s a grandad on the touchline absolutely losing the plot while watching his grandson play.
Perhaps what bothers me most is that the boys on the pitch start copying this behaviour. Why should they behave themselves when the adults on the sidelines apparently don’t have to? I completely understand that coaches and team volunteers put an enormous amount of time into their teams. But, to be honest, I suspect a black card like this would simply add fuel to the fire. One overzealous parent ruins the match for everyone.
What was it like in hockey, I wonder? Did you regularly get grandads, parents and coaches all turning themselves into the national team manager, referee and VAR official rolled into one? Fortunately, at my son’s club, there’s a lovely grey-haired lady who goes around asking grandads what exactly is bothering them. Miraculously, it seems to work. Perhaps calmly asking someone why they’re so angry is a better way of dealing with the situation than brandishing a black card.
So perhaps no black card, but simply a bunch of flowers for this wonderful volunteer. Every single match, without fail…
Incidentally, she thought I’d refereed ‘reasonably well’. 😊 After being labelled ‘the worst ref on the planet’, I’ll take that as a bit of a boost!
How frustrating and sad that things have to be this way… I think, generally speaking, things are a little less intense in hockey. My dad often acted as a linesman at my younger brother’s football matches, and he also found that parents were more annoying and aggressive there than at hockey. Hockey and football parents are probably equally passionate, but the social norm in hockey seems to be to keep that passion under wraps (only to put pressure on the club’s technical committee behind the scenes to make absolutely sure their child gets selected for the first team). That said, I recently saw on the NOS news that Dutch hockey clubs do indeed see touchline misbehaviour as a problem, and are putting up posters to raise awareness.
What I remember most, though, is the coaches shouting at us as players. When I was ten, I was allowed to move up early to the elite team, while my friends wouldn’t join until the following year. I found that daunting enough as it was. Suddenly, I was playing alongside girls in Year 8 when I was still in Year 7 — quite an age gap at that stage. So I wasn’t exactly feeling at ease to begin with.
The club’s technical committee had explained to my parents and me that the move was all about my development, and that I should therefore feel free to make mistakes on the pitch. But when it came to the actual matches and I lost the ball while trying to take on an opponent, our coach (who was just another dad, after all) couldn’t contain his frustration. He would dramatically hurl his water bottle to the ground and bellow that I’d messed it up yet again. He didn’t hold back on the swearing, either. There was so much anger in his voice that I would immediately retreat into my shell. After one defeat, he once called us all together on the pitch and shouted that we should be ashamed of ourselves. Pointing at our parents on the sidelines, he ranted that they had all come to watch us for nothing and could have spent their time much better elsewhere.
My parents wondered whether they should take me out of the team, and in hindsight they regret not doing so. And this wasn’t the only coach who could behave like that. As I got older, I did find it easier to let things wash over me. But right up until my final hockey match in the United States, when I was 21, my coaches (who were absolutely fantastic, by the way) had to keep reminding me not to pass the ball too quickly, but to take players on instead. I was still afraid of losing possession.
These days, I no longer have a ball to pass, but I still tend to put the team’s needs ahead of my own far too quickly. This behaviour certainly won’t stem solely from my experiences on the hockey pitch; it’s probably just deeply ingrained in my character, too. Other girls seemed less affected by it. Still, I would have loved to hire that lovely grey-haired lady, even if only in retrospect. 😉