When the referee has to act in some way

Most sports have strict rules against a player or team official taunting or passing bitter remarks towards an opponent with severe penalties attached, such as technical fouls in my sport basketball or yellow/red cards in football.

There is no need to beat round the bush. The stark reality is that nothing gets tempers flaring in sports quite like taunting and what is generally termed as trash talk in common sports vocabulary. In my opinion, and I am sure I share the views with many others, taunting and trash talking have no place in sports.

When it comes to acts of poor sportsmanship, I am sure that few people honestly glorify cheap shots, unnecessary rough play, fighting or cheating. But the art of the taunt is practically becoming quite common in European sports and our islands are no exception.

Unfortunately there are also some who contend that taunting and trash talking, which are technically acts aimed at insulting, ridiculing and intimidating an opponent, are beginning to hold a special place in our society.

You might wonder at what I am referring but let me cite just one simple example. Take an innocent-looking sports video game and you can easily find stunning images of a player degrading an opponent during playing time. To make matters worse, in some games, the program glorifies such behaviour and you can often earn extra points if your taunts are really creative.

A study published recently by Jim Arehart in the USA, shows that 47 percent of males and 19 percent of females in high school competitions think it is proper to trash talk a defender after every score. If one had to analyse why such things occur, one would easily arrive to the fact that practically speaking, the idea behind trash talking and taunting is that it gives one player a mental edge over another. However, that sort of perceived edge, involving humiliation and intimidation, is not in the spirit of the game in sports.

I remember reading an interview with NBA referee Monty McCutchen, where this seasoned referee openly said that even at the highly-rated American basketball professional level, if a referee had to allow taunting, he would be opening clearly a large door towards a guaranteed quarrel and clash.

In fact this is the key problem with taunting. Consistently it leads to worse actions if it is not stopped immediately. What some people might point to and call harmless jeering or gesticulating is actually the start of a short road to rough, dangerous play and possibly extreme fights.

Some may still be wondering to what kind of taunts I am referring. Actually, taunts come in every shape, form and fashion, and most often occur after some good play. They may also be a response to another player starting to gain an advantage (in form) in such a way that an opponent has no answer except to try and get the in-form player out of his or her rhythm.

Having said this, one must note however that not all trash talk is created equal and there are differences in how you deal with the many forms and levels of taunting. In fact not all interactions between opposing players are taunts and this is where experience, common sense and feel of the game can play a crucial role for the referee.

Generally speaking, for an action or word to be taunting in nature the intention must be to bait, ridicule, anger, embarrass or degrade an opponent. There is some breathing space for referees to interpret what constitutes a taunt. For example, does the simple gesture of raising a fist and letting out an enthusiastic cry after a score constitute taunting? Probably not, even though that action might annoy an opponent.


There is still room for spontaneous (and brief) celebratory acts in sports at all levels. Let me cite a slightly different scenario. What if that raised fist and keen cry was done while looking directly at the beaten defender/s? Now the referee has to be careful as one is in taunting territory.

My honest advice, learned from other experienced and knowledgeable referees, for deciding whether or not certain behaviour is a taunt is to know as much as I can about the match-ups, personalities and the style of play. Following this, the individual game circumstances generally necessitate whether to issue just a warning or to penalize according to the rules.

Certain taunts are very evident as finger pointing, name-calling and nose-to-nose confrontations. In the past season I have heard verbal taunts that most often involved profanity, vulgarity, questions of manhood and declarations of size (or lack of size!).

In certain games I witnessed even more clever acts than that, such as walking by an opponent and measuring out the space to make sure there is a slight shoulder bump. We, referees, need to use common sense. For example, if the two teams have had fights during their game, and that shoulder bump comes right after the initial jump ball of the game, then it would be foolish to just ignore it, even though the intimidation is restrained, because there is no doubt that it will lead to superior and harsher situations further into the match. Deciding when just to warn and when to effectively penalize with a technical foul is the ‘art’ part of our jobs.

Every taunt, no matter how subtle, must be addressed in some way, shape or form. It might be a harsh warning (visible to everyone) or a cunning acknowledgement (a sort of private warning) that lets the player know he was seen and that he is acting on the borderline, or it can be the full penalty, like a technical foul or even disqualifying without warning in basketball.

This is the main point I wanted to make today. I chose to deal with this subject during summer as the league is on hold and one can easily reason out things without any pressure from games. Unfortunately, and I have to openly admit it, certain referees harm their colleagues to a great extent when they either turn a blind eye to taunts or avoid taking any action either because they feel pressured or because they do not want to ‘rock the boat’. This is amateurism at its best and ultimately will put the good and courageous referees in a bad light with those who want to gain an illegal advantage.

There is finally one thing a referee is to keep in mind. Sometimes players will engage in a little, what I may term, "friendly jabbing" that looks and sounds just like taunting. This can occur in any game in which opponents know each other and are on friendly terms. Still, it must be addressed even if in a light manner with both players.

For example, in a game last season I heard a player say something to an opponent. The latter however never responded and just kept walking toward his bench. I addressed it with the player and he said that (the other player) was his good friend and he was just fooling with him. Yet I made it clear that, although it is good to have such a relationship, I had no idea and the only reason I did not call an immediate technical foul was that the opponent did not respond and I was the only one who heard the comments.

To conclude I want to again highlight the fact that it takes a strong referee who is more interested in protecting the game than in protecting himself to address taunts and trash-talk. Dealing directly with taunts is rarely popular especially with biased followers.