Auckland Rugby Referees Association board chairman Don Crawford described the weekend's attack was a "sad reflection of society".
"How would you like to be a kid seeing your parent run on and hit someone. It's under-10s, for God's sake. They're there to have fun on a Saturday morning," he said.
"We take that sort of behaviour from a parent very seriously and I know it will be investigated by Auckland Rugby Judiciary."
Despite the attack on Saturday, and last August's Otahuhu attack, Mr Crawford was not aware of referees being concerned for their safety during matches.
"Violence or abuse is not really a deterrent to them," Mr Crawford said.
He said physical assaults on referees were "very few and far between and are dealt with extremely harshly by the judiciary".
"Players are well aware of what the penalties are, that tends to discourage that sort of behaviour," he said, adding verbal abuse of referees is also dealt with harshly.
Mr Crawford said around 35 new referees sign up in Auckland each intake, and about 90 percent of the union's referees are retained each season.
Paul Smith, the Auckland Football Federation's referee development officer, stressed the attack on referee Len Gattsche earlier this year was "absolutely an isolated incident", and was not aware of any attacks on officials.
"The majority of games go ahead - no issues, no problems, no dramas and we never hear anything," Mr Smith said.
He did not believe the possibility of violence or intimidation from players was keeping people from refereeing.
"They've got the tools that are available to them under the rules of the game, one of which is being yellow carded or red carded, or they've got their own man management skills to control that. Players are obviously allowed to ask questions, which the can do in a civil manner and the ref should reply in the same context," Mr Smith said. We give them training to do that."
Mr Smith said the Auckland federation has about 160 referees, a small increase on last year. Last year saw around 30 people sign up.
President of the Auckland Rugby League Referees Association president, Wayne Urquhart, was not aware of any recent violence against referees, either by players or spectators.
"There was some many years ago ... it has long since been sorted out."
Mr Urquhart rugby league tolerates no dissent from players, which differs from other football codes.
"The Auckland Rugby League and the New Zealand Rugby League both proactively got the message out that they are not there to be abused. The other advantage is a lot of people watch a lot of NRL and the refs there are sacrosanct, if a player touches a referee at all, they can be severely reprimanded.
"When you compare that to what happens to soccer referees ... when you watch a soccer game, and the way they get spoken to by players, the commentary they have to put up with, and the threatening behaviour they have to put up with, then you would understand why time to time they may be intimidated and even assaulted."
Mr Urquhart said it was also important to ensure the capability of the referee is in line with the level of the game.
"We're certainly not going to put a new ref with a premier team or with a team that needs a stronger referee."
Each of the code's spokesmen said that while numbers had increased this season, they could still do with more referees. They each said people choose to referee to give back to the game, to keep involved in the game after injury and to stay fit.
