HORROR stories abound about parents' disgraceful behaviour on the sidelines, ranging from screaming and shouting abuse at both young players and referees, to physical violence.

Games all over the country have been abandoned because of parents' behaviour - Surrey County FA, for example, sent letters to more than 2,000 local youth teams earlier this season asking them to clamp down on parents' violent conduct after a series of touchline incidents led to matches being abandoned.

Paul Cooper, a children's football coach who co-founded the Give Us Back Our Game (GUBOG) campaign in a bid to "put children first" at matches, says the problem lies in the fact that children's football is no longer about the kids that play it, but the adults who watch and run it.

"The adults have completely taken over, and kids are playing to adult rules and for adult values. Those adult values mean normally mild-mannered mums can be on the sidelines screaming - that's what it does to parents."

As in adult games, the referees get a lot of the abuse, and the linesmen don't escape either - a 40-year-old woman was cautioned recently by police and her 16-year-old son was reprimanded after a linesman ended up in hospital with head injuries following an attack at an under-13 match in Huddersfield.

Cooper suggests that the way to ease the pressure, and hopefully avoid such behaviour, is not to have leagues for young children, mix players of different abilities, and have no referee.

"That way they can play as children and have fun with no pressure, and the adults can step back.

"If parents shout and scream from the sidelines it has a negative effect on children's behaviour and the way they play, and the game isn't fun for them."

GUBOG has met the FA as part of the current FA Respect campaign, which aims to address poor behaviour from players to referees, and tackle pushy parents on the sidelines.

The campaign is currently running a series of pilot projects in youth leagues around the country, looking at how parents act at matches. The aim is to implement specific behavioural improvement measures identified in the pilot next season.

Suggestions include roping off the area where parents stand at matches, and introducing a standard code of conduct for them.

An FA spokesman says: "They're common sense measures. These matches are so emotive for the parents - they all have aspirations that their kid could be the next Beckham, and things spill over."

Kairen Cullen, an educational psychologist who has consulted in community football schemes, says parents' behaviour on the sidelines often arises from a clash of roles.

"The tensions between being a responsible, mature adult clash with the emotional release of engaging in play and being childlike. This is all the more shocking when the adult is also a parent and their child is present."

Cullen says if parents behave badly at matches it affects children in different ways, but it can have a particular effect if the behaviour is out of character for the parent.

"Then children are likely to find it hard to handle, embarrassing and in some extreme cases harmful."

However, she points out that the behaviour of professional players and their managers also has a substantial effect on children's views on authority and rules, stressing: "In my view their influence is equally, if not more, key as it's likely that this influences both parents and children."

But Jim White, author of You'll Win Nothing With Kids: Fathers, Sons And Football, sums up the problem: "In six years coaching my son's football team I have come to the following conclusion: short of excess intake of alcohol, there is nothing that alters the behaviour of adults for the worse as much as youth football."