Has anything changed?

[Scotty Ref]

I recently came across this documentary from the late 90s.

The main key points from it seem to be, the issue of violence against referees and issues of recruiting and retaining referees. It seems like not a lot has changed in the last 25 years or so. I also wonder how those in the documentary progressed/stayed involved in refereeing?

 

[RustyRef]

I personally don't think it is any worse now, but when abuse and violence happens now it is obviously publicised a lot more due to social media. 25 years ago if a referee was assaulted you'd only find out about it through your local RA meetings, you'd only hear about a referee outside of your region being assaulted if it was in the national media, which I can't remember even seeing.

We also now have 24x7 TV and radio sports channels that often talk about refereeing issues, and they didn't really exist back then.