Talking Sport Now & Then: Ex-Rovers man not ready to blow final whistle on refereeing

Stuart, who believes that he is the oldest whistler in the city, has refereed in the Doncaster Rovers Sunday League, formerly known as the Doncaster Sunday Alliance League, for many years and takes charge of games in all the divisions as well as the odd Doncaster Rovers Academy game on a Wednesday.

Said Stuart: “My legs aren’t as good as they used to be and I’m not always in the right place at the right time as in the past, but I use my experience and that gets me by on a lot of occasions.

“Fortunately, a lot of the players know who I am and my connections with Rovers over the years and that I have been with the Alliance League since it started and that makes it a lot easier. Although I still have the odd problem with one or two players, touch wood, I’ve not found the situation getting worse,” he said.

“I’m chairman of the Sheffield & Hallamshire County FA disciplinary committee for the last six or seven years so I see a lot of the disciplinary stuff come through and hear about incidents, though I’m not allowed to deal with anything that happens in Doncaster.

“There is an awful lot of kids’ football where parents are getting involved and it’s getting out of hand with games being abandoned. From what I see sat on the disciplinary committee, kids’ football is worse than the adult game.

“The men’s game is a lot cleaner than it used to be when you had all the sliding tackles. They all have to go to work on a Monday morning and generally speaking players - though you still get the odd one - are a lot more careful.

“The Doncaster League Premier Division is a good standard; I would say it’s basically the same level as the North East Counties, but the lower you go down the skill levels drop and it’s more about enjoying the game.

“I still enjoy refereeing and that’s the only reason I continue to do it. I go to the gym a couple of times a week.

“I’ve been fairly lucky with injuries over the years though I did my Achilles (tendon) which put paid to any hopes of going higher than the Northern Premier League and that still sometimes flares up.”

Despite not having any official connection with the club these days, Stuart is still a regular at the Eco-Power Stadium and still has faith in manger Grant McCann despite a mixed start on his return to the club.

“Grant is a good manager and he knows what he is doing,” said Stuart, a former chairman at Frickley Colliery,

*Doncaster RLFC’s 2024 fixture list was recently released and it was good to learn that the supporters have responded to some of the club’s biggest signings since the mid-90s by flocking to buy season tickets in a way rarely seen in modern times.

The one disappointment for the club will be the fact that pre-season favourites Wakefield Trinity, won’t check in at the Eco-Power Stadium until the last weekend of the regular season when the likelihood is that a lot of things will have been decided by then and that could affect the size of the crowd.

*Belated congratulations to teenage Doncaster golfer Josh Berry on qualifying for the 2024 DP European Tour in such impressive style.

I have closely followed Josh’s progress through the junior ranks in this paper and look forward to him taking on some of the biggest names in the sport in the years ahead.

But it would be wrong to put too much expectation on his young shoulders at this stage of his career and the likelihood is that it will take him several years find his feet let alone let alone start to challenge for big titles.

The depth of talent at the top level of the sport is off the scale – perhaps not surprising given the huge amount of money on offer – and that is something he will have to come to terms with.

And that won’t be easy over the next couple of years when he is often likely to miss the cut – something he’s not been used to in recent years – unless he surprises us all.

*One of the things that used to frustrate me art times during the days when I covered Doncaster Rovers, Doncaster RLFC and Doncaster Knights was the way various managers/head coaches - though certainly not all - described very similar scores in such different ways.

They would often heap praise on their players but then describe an almost identical goal/try scored by the opposition as being ‘soft’.

I suspect most supporters saw things in a similar light.

It is the job of a sports writer covering the game to decide if the score was a result of individual brilliance or dreadful defending and all things in between.

Although local/regional reporters always want to see the team they are covering do well they are, I would argue, better placed than club website reporters to be more critical of both management and players when the need arises.

Because website reporters are employees of the club, by and large they tend to be a lot less critical. That is not to question their abilities. Indeed, I hold current Rovers’ media boss Liam Hoden in the highest esteem.

*Former Doncaster Town bowler Richard Dawson made an impressive England debut 22 years ago last month in their drawn two-day game against a President’s XI during their tour of India.

He was named bowler of the match and shared the man-of-the-match award with captain Nasser Hussain.