And the majority will! I remember when I was starting out and going through the promotion stages and (unfortunately) had to referee Sunday football for a short time. An incident occurred and one team took it to far and were displaying some very unsavoury/threatening behaviour. This fortunately for me was in a communal park (Newbold Comyn) and there were several referees around. They heard/saw the commotion and immediately three of them stopped their games and came over.
This is where being on the good Leagues differs, as traditionally Saturday is football day where most of the good players will play and Sunday is for the cloggers.
To be fair that’s the only time I have been a bit intimidated but that was also down to being inexperienced. The same would never happen to me now.
The only bad refs I ever really saw on Sunday league were the ones who loved to wind people up and thought they were somehow the leaders of the western world because they were a ref. So many of them were decent blokes and you could have a laugh and they would diffuse things quickly with a bit of a laugh, a couple were absolute bellends and would let things go and boil over and had no control. It was all down to the way the ref would interact with the players 90% of the time, don't get me wrong 10% of the time it was just players being a bellend.
If I remember, the best ones were either really young or the really old ones. A lot of the middle aged ones were the ones with a chip on their shoulder and would give it loads.
It's like in proper football when a ref has no control and misses a bad tackle, the next one that flies in is a bad one, if he misses is that it gets worse and worse and eventually erupts.
The refs also have to deal with non proper linesmen as well in Sunday League, I remember being flagged offside in my own half and when I said what are you on about he started laughing. It's shit like that that makes it worse.
I don't agree with the parents coaching and abusing the ref though, it should just be down to the kids coach and the parents should be warned not to try and coach (encouragement is fine).