the Ref' month.

Aldwin Savery, chairman of the referees committee, made his plea as the Bermuda Football Association announced that eight new officials would be introduced over the next few weeks in a bid to ease the refereeing crisis.

"We would dearly love to retain them,'' Savery said in a thinly-veiled warning to abusive coaches and players.

The call comes a week after Dennis Brown, coach of newly-promoted Wolves, was given the red card for allegedly directing abusive comments at a linesman and at a time when the officials themselves are pushing for a pay rise.

Brown, a member of the BFA's national coaching staff, was given his marching orders by referee Cal Simons after 69 minutes of his team's opening clash with Somerset at Devonshire Rec.

He subsequently admitted directing "a few words'' at the linesman but strongly denied being abusive.

In a letter to The Royal Gazette (see Page 23), Savery urges the newspaper to lead the campaign to back referees, saying: "This is the most promising year we have had for some time. Eight men willing to give up their time for the love of football.'' He suggests that The Gazette should "appeal to all football coaches and the players on the benches not to shout abuse at referees''.

He explains: "It's an experiment, you see: to find out if the refs are really as bad as all the insults suggest. Some of them have a long way to go, but some of them seem to do pretty well.

"If we could induce coaches and players on the benches to take a vow of monastic silence for a month we'd have the beginning of a controlled experiment which would allow us to compare games played against the traditional background of referee abuse from the coaches and benches, and those in which the abuse comes merely from the spectators.

"In this way we might be able to find out what affect all the negative remarks have on the performances of the referees.

"Better or worse games? Cleaner or rougher? More or fewer whistles? More or less cards? Different results? "I think there would be no significant difference.'' Savery admits that the refereeing on the Island is not perfect, but stresses the difficulties of the job.

"We do have our problems,'' he says. "The football family is entitled to expect he has taken the trouble to learn the rules he is required to enforce.

The referee's responsibility is to be fit, fast and fair. But it does take courage to make tough calls in split seconds.''