Josh Hoskin Smart Money [email protected]

Parents yelling at children and the ref are nothing new in sport but sometimes thinking about it from a 10 year old's perspective might help us all realign our perspective.

Let's pretend you are a child playing rugby or basketball or soccer on a Saturday or Friday night. Great fun for the most part but when you have a reasonable crowd and some good opposition, you might be a little apprehensive. Add to that damp conditions for rugby and soccer and it can begin to start to look like things are stacking up against you. Just to finish it all off, after two minutes you can hear maybe up to five different voices telling you to do five different things. I tell you right now, it is not a way to promote excellence in skill execution.

If this does not work for you, put yourself in your work life and imagine yourself having five different bosses with five different thoughts as to what you should do. If that does not confuse you, nothing will.

The reality is often there is a lot of conjecture around refereeing which causes parent angst. The problem these days is the ref is a volunteer often not equipped to do the job but just a parent that was the last person asked and so could not say no. So if the person in charge is not qualified to make decisions, how do you expect the game to flow the right way?

The same could be said of the leaders of various countries – if they are not equipped to the job well, what chance do the rest of us have? The people will revolt taking things into their own hands. Let's hope there are some leaders in Europe and across the world that will stand up quickly.