Rough incidents decreased in Dutch amateur football

The number of rough incidents in Dutch football has decreased with 15% during last season. The total number incidents like beating up a referee or kicking a player who’s lying on the ground is now 412 in the 2012/2013 season. The incidents where groups were the perpetrator halved to 100, but incidents with individuals going mad increased.

The stats are published by the Dutch FA on the day that the pre-trail in the Appeal Court started in the Richard Nieuwenhuizen case. He’s the linesman who died after a violent incident during a football match. 7 suspects were found guilty of manslaughter on the assistant referee. The father of one of the players is punished with 6 years imprisonment. Six minors all got the maximum penalty possible in juvenile justice for their age. One who was 15-years-old during the incident got a jail sentence of 10 months The others all got 1,5 years jailtime.

Since 2nd of December 2012, the date that Richard Nieuwenhuizen died, there was a huge decrease of rough incidents. Before that moment there were on average 10,9 matches with rough incidents. After that weekend the average was 5,74. “But we’re not there yet”, says Anton Binnenmars, director of Dutch amateur football. “But the new approach of severe punishment works. Punishment is also better targeted at the perpetrators.” He’s stating that the KNVB will punish collective misbehaviour very hard. “Last season there were two clubs of which all teams were taken out of the competition.”

Dutch FA took some measures to prevent referees from violence, like introduction of an emergency number, possibility to hand out 10 minute bans and severe sanctions. Read all 10 measures against violence from the Dutch FA.

> Download pdf with stats from the Dutch FA per region
> Read story about the verdict in the Nieuwenhuizen case