WHEN Greg Auhl cops a mouthful from a player or spectator, he's pretty used to it.
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Almost 20 years of experience refereeing soccer in Bathurst, he's developed a fairly thick skin to those that like to argue back.
But sometimes those disagreements can boil over.
"I felt I was going to get into a brawl one day," Auhl said, remembering his worst incident.
"A player came up to me, after I called a free kick against him. He came storming at me, saying: 'I'm going to [expletive] kill you'.
"It was a total brain snap."
Of course, that's not an every day occurrence.
Auhl, the vice president of the Bathurst Football Referees Association, said most players in Bathurst are "pretty reasonable", which is helped by the strong backing referees get from Bathurst District Football (BDF), the governing body of the sport in the region.
![Bathurst referee Greg Auhl standing beside the fence of Proctor Park field one. Picture by Bradley Jurd Bathurst referee Greg Auhl standing beside the fence of Proctor Park field one. Picture by Bradley Jurd](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/33jmgggMux4cQ6bJ2r3hFg4/8f619d97-b644-43d6-845d-a0091f356bbc.JPG/r470_124_5098_3168_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
"In Bathurst, I think it's not as bad as it used to be from players," he said.
"BDF takes a pretty strong stance on referee abuse and we really appreciate that. It makes everything better when we don't have to put up with crap from everyone.
"Not to say that it doesn't happen - because it does - but we do our best to manage junior referees on games, to make sure there's seniors around, to look after them.
"Most of the players in Bathurst area pretty reasonable. A lot of the abuse happens at a higher level."
It only takes one incident
Earlier this month, James Johnson, the chief executive officer of Football Australia, came out, claiming any abuse against match officials as "unacceptable" and "contradicts the spirit of football".
His comments came after a number of highly-publicised incidents in the A-League Men, where the Western Sydney Wanderers coach Marko Rudan criticised the performance of a referee in a post-match press conference and club owner Paul Lederer confronted match officials on the pitch after another game.
Johnson said 40 per cent of registered match officials are lost every year, which translates to around 4200.
He said despite the growing participation of the sport and the success of the men and women's nationals teams, the base of 11,000 officials have not expanded since 2011.
Auhl was not surprised by these numbers, saying they were probably "on point".
"If we were to train 20 kids each year, five of them never referee and the following season, half a dozen would come back," he said.
"There's a lot of reasons for that and abuse isn't the only reason, but it does play a factor.
"The ones that stay are the ones that build a bit of resilience, develop some self confidence.
"You look at someone like Harvey Lew, who's come through as a junior. We've nurtured him through to the point where he'll be a regular first grade referee and referee his first WPL games."
And while Lew is an example of a junior referee who has developed resilience, not everyone does.
"We had a young bloke, coming through once. He was a bit like Harvey, a really good young referee, developing nicely," Auhl said.
"We had him when he was about 15 or 16 on a lower age group for NPL. He copped a gob full from a Sydney coach and never came back.
"He would've went off to university, but even so, he would probably still be refereeing somewhere, except for that one incident. It only takes one incident for a kid to say, 'Nup, not worth it'."
I got "conned" into it
Auhl began his referee journey back in 2006.
Coming from a rugby union background, he didn't have much experience in soccer.
But it was his son who convinced him to give refereeing a go.
"I got conned by my son," he said, with a laugh.
"My son had done the referee course the year before and said, 'Dad, you should come along and we can referee together'.
"We did referee a bit that season and the following season and then he stopped refereeing because he got another job. But I kept going."
And Auhl hasn't looked back.
Now semi-retired, he's still getting around at Proctor Park on Saturdays and Sundays throughout the winter, with his whistle in hand.
"It can be challenging at times, but it's giving back something back to the game that was really good to my kids and help them to become the people they are," he said.
"There's great camaraderie within the referees. Because I'm a teacher, I like working with the young kids and helping build their confidence and build their skill."