A 13-YEAR-OLD Wiltshire footballer who head-butted his referee may have been imitating what he had seen Premiership footballers do on television, county Football Association secretary Mike Benson said today.

The boy, who the Wiltshire FA will not name, was understood to be playing for Swindon Town AFC in an under 14s match when the incident happened.

The 16-year-old referee in the match, which was part of the North Wiltshire District Youth and Minor League, showed the boy the red card and continued the game.

The Wiltshire FA handed the boy a two-year suspension from play and said he would be sent on a training course to teach him to control his temper.

Benson said: "If you look into the trends, what happened in football on the television - within a week or two afterwards the same thing is happening in a local junior park.

"This is the problem when role models don't set a good example in the professional game, that feeds down to youth footballers. Television has a responsibility to think about how they show these things."

Benson said that while the 13-year-old's behaviour was "an isolated incident" in that age group, more and more violence is beginning to filter into youth football.

He said: "We have had incidents in previous weeks where people do stupid things like head-butting and attempting to head-butt. That's the first one we've had to deal with at that particular age but the problem is increasing in youth football."