A LEADING headmaster has called on Blackburn Rovers boss Brian Kidd and other professional managers to help combat increasing violence on school football fields.

Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School head Dr David Hempsall was speaking at a unique conference aimed at improving the decline in sportsmanship in school football.

The idea was sparked by an horrific tackle on 17-year-old pupil Adam Gough which broke his leg in three places during a 'friendly' with Lytham High School.

His mother Lynn, of Ribchester, listened to delegates at QEGS including Blackburn-based players' union chief Gordon Taylor and former league referee Ray Lewis search for answers to increasing levels of violence and intimidation at under 19 level. Dr Hempsall said: "We've all be impressed by the minor miracles wrought by Brian Kidd - his straight up and down, no-nonsense approach is refreshing.

"After Saturday's game in which Jason Wilcox was sent off, he was reported as saying 'We are not a dirty team'.

"For the record, during Mr Kidd's managership, Rovers have been reduced to 10 men in a third of their matches.

"We are in an Orwellian world of double speak when honest men become mealy-mouthed.

"There's a saying: The fish rots from the head down.

"Soccer at the top level presently presents a pretty unedifying spectacle.

"We cannot change the whole of society - it's for others to address what goes on in the top echelon.

"As educators, however, we must cultivate our own garden which is, quite clearly, being overrun by the weeds from the Sunday league mentality.

"My concern is that fairminded players will conclude that it isn't worth the biscuit and drop out, and that referees fed up with the abuse will also drop out. "This will leave the field to the thugs and the bully-boys."

But Taylor stressed that professional footballers were too often made the scapegoats, claiming that politicians and clergy could also set a poor example.

He argued: "You sometimes get the impression that professional footballers have to bear the brunt of all society's ills.

"Ice hockey almost glorifies the violence and we are in a society that pays people to fight and damage their brains in boxing.

"In rugby it's accepted that teams could go on tours and damage hotels.

"I cannot accept that football is all bad.

"But if I am addressing school meetings about problems at under 19 level then I think it has come to the stage where points are deducted and awarded for standards of conduct."

Lewis called for referees to return to tougher old-fashioned values.

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