FORMER FA Cup final referee Alan Robinson has praised the Daily Echo Respect The Ref campaign and believes such initiatives will be essential in the bid to improve behaviour in grass-roots football across the county.

Fareham-based Robinson enjoyed his finest officiating hour when he took charge of the all-Merseyside 1986 final at Wembley between Liverpool and Everton, which Liverpool won 3-1.

It was also his final game refereeing in the ‘big time’ of professional football.

Nowadays, aged 71, he remains very much involved in football at a local level as a Wessex League referees’ assessor.

And he said: “Respect The Ref is an excellent campaign.

“It has created quite a lot of publicity and has brought some important issues to people’s attention.

“Such campaigns are needed.

“The more we can do to promote the problems of referees and how we want support from the clubs and players the better.”

However, Robinson feels it will be a little while before the full effects of campaigns like Respect The Ref and the FA’s Respect programme really begin to show.

“Give them time and they will work,” he said.

“Like any new scheme you have got to have time for adjustment and for people to get used to it.

“It’s a new thing that has been thrown in at both players and referees.”

Robinson, who began refereeing in 1956 and took charge of his first Football League game ten years later, thinks behaviour on football pitches up and down the country would be different today had schemes advocating greater respect for match officials been introduced two or three decades ago.

But he accepts the need to preach about respect for referees from players and spectators didn’t really exist back then.

“There was a totally different atmosphere between players and referees,” he said.

“We talk about the Respect campaign – we all respected each other back then.

“It was dead easy in my day. You didn’t get any trouble at all.”

Robinson began his career refereeing in the Portsmouth Youth League.

And after retiring as a Football League official following 20 years’ service he returned to where it all began “to give something back to the game.”

“One thing I noticed that changed was the influence of the parents,” recalled Robinson.

“It’s funny because when I had youth games I had no trouble.

“They used to give me real humdinger games between teams who had history but you always heard people saying ‘don’t do anything today because we have got Alan Robinson’. That just made me feel sorry for the young refs. For them it’s a huge battle.”

And Robinson, who is also secretary of the Portsmouth local area referees’ committee, believes problem parents remain one of the major issue in grass-roots football today.

He said: “Some of our local referees are school masters and say the attitude of kids and parents nowadays is terrible.

“The parents have more influence now than ever before.

“To start with in youth football you were lucky to see one man and his dog. Now they are all along the touchline.”

He added: “Players’ behaviour nowadays is all to do with what they see on the box and how the professionals get away with it.

“That’s why the Respect campaign should have started at the top.

“People nowadays resent authority, but if the disciplinary authorities, and that starts at Soho Square, had longer suspensions and fines for abusing referees then people would have second thoughts about doing it.”

For more on the Respect the Ref campaign don't miss today's Daily Echo.