CRAVEN & District Football League players and club officials are heading like lemmings to extinction and putting the very future of their league at risk, writes Tony Simpson.

That is the view of some senior officials in the Devonshire Carpets League, who signalled their anger and dismay at a deteriorating situation by calling a Special General Meeting this week to confront member clubs.

The vexed question of referee abuse has been a cancer running through the game in Craven for a few years now. Repeated attempts by league officials to address the issue have failed miserably and there is no obvious sign of clubs taking any action to curb what is increasingly becoming a life-threatening trend so far as the league is concerned.

At this moment there are only 12 regular referees committed solely to Craven League activities, with another two or three being prepared to help out when they are not needed by other leagues.

Recruitment pleas have not been sufficiently successful to ease the problem and the league has become increasingly dependent on volunteer referees from clubs for getting games in the lower divisions played at all.

Yet the situation is now reaching proportions where the viability of the competition is being called into question as the misbehaviour that has helped provoke the decline continues unabated.