EVERY week I receive a blog from a young Dutch referee.

Mainly it contains ideas for his fellow young referees in the Netherlands on how to improve their performance, such as training plans and tips from senior referees.

However, at the end of the World Cup he made a comment I totally support and I would think has a resonance with referees around the world.

He said he thought referees in the lower regions of the game were let down by the World Cup.

He was not talking about the effectiveness of VAR, but instead to the constant harassing of referees by the players. Almost every decision it seemed had to be challenged.

Players would crowd around the referee in numbers, fingers wagging and snarling in his face without any action from the referee.

There was a public review half way through the tournament.

The players were congratulated on their behaviour and it was reported the number of yellow cards awarded was lower than previous World Cups.

It has been suggested however, the referees were asked to go easy on yellow cards.

As an example, although Croatia were the better side, one player in their game against England, committed enough cautionable offences to be been sent off twice, without recourse.

We can all recall I’m sure, plenty of instances in other games, where yellow cards were called for but not given.

But why does this leniency at the top level of the game concern our young Dutch referee or indeed local referees in this country?

It is simply that the games were watched by hundreds of millions of football fans who were led to believe that this culture of abuse to referees is purely something to be tolerated and in the case of lower football perhaps, even copied.

Here was an opportunity to support referees, not just in this country and Holland but throughout the world, and show this type of behaviour is not acceptable.

An opportunity sadly missed.