A rise in umpire abuse has prompted the Sunbury Saints Basketball Club to take a stand – one t-shirt at a time.
Following a meeting with the Sunbury Basketball Association, Saints president Damon Sinfield said the club wanted to support the league’s soon-to-be introduced zero tolerance policy by donning coaches in ‘No Ref, No Play’ tees.
“We put it on the back because spectators are looking at the back of the coach most of the time,” Sinfield said.
He said basketball had lost “a lot of referees” in the last 12 months across the state, and according to Basketball Victoria, the sport is down 40 per cent on active referees since 2019.
“As many of you would be aware, many referees have or are quitting the game we all love due to abuse from parents, players, coaches and spectators,” Basketball Australia said.
“We are not alone as the only community sport facing this issue.”
Sinfield said it was “a big problem” that could have been triggered as people came out of lockdown, behaving more poorly after being “cooped up”.
“We want to be inclusive and just have a really good culture where we do show good sportsmanship, and we respect everybody – players, coaches and spectators – everybody respects everybody,” Sinfield said.
“That’s the environment we want.”
He said the coaching cohort, from teenagers to parents, were “happy to wear them”.
“It’s a great way to support, and they’ve all seen [a few] issues,” Sinfield said.
“I think they’re all just happy to have some sort of initiative that we’re really pushing.”
