HIGH-PROFILE campaigns highlighting the abuse suffered by grass-roots referees in Hampshire have failed to work, according to a long-serving Southampton official.

The Daily Echo launched our Respect The Ref campaign way back in early 2006, aimed at reducing the amount of ill-discipline – both verbal and physical – throughout the local leagues at both adult and junior football.

A few years later the theme was taken up by the national Football Association via their own Respect programme.

But Steve Saunders, the referees representative on the Southampton & District Sunday League’s committee, is adamant the campaigns have had little impact locally.

And he fears it will be some time before the message of both gets through – even though the amount of cautions handed out in Hampshire FA approved leagues went down in 2009/10.

The experienced 52-year-old Saunders, who has been a qualified official since the late 1980s and refereed as high as the Conference South, said: “There has been no change at all.

“Anyone that’s coming into the game now has not got a hope at all.

“I get the respect because I’m probably an older, more experienced referee.

“But it’s going to take a bit of time for the youngsters to come along and get respect.

“Over the next five or six years you might see a change but it will be gradual.”

Saunders added: “When you get the younger generation of players (who have grown up in the Respect era) coming through then things may change.

“But until the older generation decide to give up, it won’t.

“It’s going to take an awful long time.”

One thing that may help speed up the process is tougher punishments for offenders.

“The FA and the local leagues need to be stronger,” Saunders suggested.

“If a referee reports a team to the league and the FA they need to come down on the team as heavy as they can and it might get across the message that they are not going to tolerate it any more.”

Hampshire FA Chief Executive Neil Cassar, however, feels the two Respect-based initiatives have been successful.

He believesthey have forced some people to “take a long hard look at themselves and how they behave at matches.”

He said: “Both initiatives have proved to be successful with statistics indicating that levels of dissent have decreased year on year “The key messages, especially in some of The FA films, have been very hard hitting and it has certainly made some individuals, perhaps more so with spectators in youth football, take a long hard look at themselves and how they behave at matches.”

Figures for the 2009/10 season show the number of bookings for dissent in Hampshire fell by 169 from the previous season, from 4,620 to 4,451.

• More on our Respect the Ref campaign in this weekend's Pink