Female referee stops game after being told to 'wash the dishes'

Female referee, Marta Galego, stopped proceedings during a Catalan Second Division game this past Sunday after a spectator in the stands heckled her with a sexist remark. Galego was officiating a match between UE Valls and Cambrils Unió when a member of the crowd shouted out “go wash the dishes to her”. Instead of being fazed by the bias in his comments, her reaction to the incident was truly commendable.

She called a halt to the match immediately and waited to restart until the offending fan was escorted out of the stadium. It took an entire three minutes while the heckler was located and ousted from the grounds while the match was kept on hold.

When the jeering offender was finally located, he turned out to be a member of UE Valls causing Galego to make a note in her pad most probably with the intent of reporting the incident to the Catalan Football Federation.

Once the UE Valls fan was escorted out of the stadium and the match was resumed, the rest of the spectators gave Galego a standing ovation in recognition of her brave stance against such sexist bias.

The matter will surely be taken up more vigorously by the Catalan Football Federation as part of their ‘Zero Insults from the Stands’ programme. The initiative is directed towards reducing the extent of offensive abuses hurled at players and officials alike during games. The Federation’s rules state that if a match is stopped thrice due to such interruptions,the game will be abandoned.

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Spain is a hotbed for unsavoury incidents

Athletic Bilbao striker Inaki Williams was subjected to racist chants in August 2016 during a game

The number of such episodes, where players and officials have been subjected to discriminatory remarks, whether racist or sexist, has been on the rise recently. In Andalusian football, an openly homosexual referee was forced to quit his job as an official as the hateful comments coming from spectators had become unbearable for him.

Even more recently, during Athletic Bilbao’s opening game against Sporting Gijon in the La Liga, their forward, Inaki Williams was subjected to racist chants that sounded like monkey noises by the Gijon supporters. The referee had to suspend play for an entire minute so that a public announcement could be made urging the people in the stands to stop.

While the game may have resumed after the chanting stopped, the Spanish Football Federation is bound to look into the matter and make an example of Sporting Gijon and the reprehensible behaviour of its supporters.