Burning issue: Are GAA referees up to scratch?

Are refereeing standards in the GAA at an acceptable level? Two JOE scribes argue the toss.

---

Mark O'Toole says... from the outset it’s very unlikely that I will win this argument.  The Irish aren’t very good at “doing” rules and our disposition to an anti-authoritarian stance has been ingrained in the national psyche for hundreds of years.

Becoming a referee is an anathema that translates in most people’s heads to “Sure, why would I want to be an a***hole?”

It is ironic then that thousands of people turn out every weekend to watch and play the national games while universally loathing and abusing the one person whom is essential to the games taking place.

The referee’s quality of performance cannot be judged by observing the rights and wrongs of individual, isolated moments in a match as being emblematic of an overall malaise in the quality of refereeing in GAA.

The inherent nature of a referee’s job isn’t to get all the decisions right on the pitch, indeed the fluid nature of the annually changing rules in fast-paced sports like football and hurling makes this an impossibility, the referees job is to be the volunteer to make the decisions that no one else has the balls to make.

They’re a different breed; for the price of their petrol money to and back from the match they’re policing, they are required to go out and take abuse from thousands of fans in Croker or angry parents on the sideline all of whom wouldn’t do the job themselves and if we use the abuse they receive as a measure for their performance they’re doing an outstanding job.

To quote Al Pacino’s Tony Montana in Scarface: “You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your f**kin' fingers and say, 'That's the bad guy.' So... what does that make you? Good? You're not good. You just know how to hide.”

Are referees up to scratch? I don’t know if they have ever been... or at least they have always been of a same standard.

You always hear ‘auld lads on their barstools decrying the standards of today’s football, while holding up golden eras of the past – the skill of Mickey Linden, the kicking ability of Maurice Fitzgerald, the fielding of Jack O’Shea. Yet their line on refereeing has always been consistent; “they’re muck”. This says more of our attitude to referees than any marked decline in officiating.

Indeed one of the few referees that I have ever heard singled out for praise is one of the modern era – Pat McEnaney - and even he was singled out for abuse after the notorious Meath-Mayo 1996 All-Ireland final.

The other problem referees face is the democratic nature of the GAA, changing rules each year. Democracy is great, but if you are a dictator like a referee you require strict, black-and-white rules to enforce. Each year the GAA sets down new rules for policing the game, most which are dropped the following year during Congress, some of which are only applicable in the league and not the Championship. Despite these annoyingly nebulous rules the GAA has yet to legislate for basic things like what constitutes an unfair tackle in football or an unfair challenge on a goalkeeper (this is especially significant given the new square ball rule.)

The GAA’s reluctance to bring in technology to assist referees is another more pertinent problem when looking to examine the reasons why rules are often inconsistently applied.

The GAA have essentially handed the referee a book of ambiguous rules that change as easily as the wind and no tools to deal with one of the fastest, most physical sports in the world outside of Aussie Rules and American Football (both who have technology to assist referees.)

On top of this there are no quantitative studies to show that refereeing is all of a sudden substandard.

Referees will always get abuse, they’re the bad guys and we need them...but maybe let’s just cut them a little slack.

---

Sean Nolan says... in light of this weekend’s events, you couldn’t say they are and the inconsistency of their displays is what really upsets players and fans alike.

Kicking referees? Surely there is no easier job. Nobody likes them and everyone is convinced they are against your team at some stage in the game. But deep down we also know that referees don’t go out to knock one team out or put one team through. We do know that, right? They are human, they make mistakes. My problem is they make too many, at crucial times, and they need to get more help.

Just a quick recap over this weekend alone throws up a fair few points backing up my view. In the Connacht final the refereeing of the handpass rule directly affected the outcome. Sligo’s David Maye was pinged for a throw when his side were going forward and then the final two Mayo points, the deciding points, both had contentious passes that looked more like illegal moves.

And that’s before we mention the disallowed Andy Moran goal (another handpass that looked okay to these eyes) and a point that never was by Colm Boyle. The game was poor but the performance of Cormac Reilly didn’t help.

The other big letdown of the week just gone was Westmeath/Kerry game. The Kingdom are very lucky to be still alive in Championship 2012 and they have referee Martin Higgins to thank. A very harsh over-carry call on Westmeath’s Ronan Foley led directly to the vital goal by Darran O’Sullivan.

The GAA have been very quick to crack down on players who speak out on Twitter about referees but after training non-stop since January, to have your year ended by a referee having an off day is very galling. No wonder they turn to Twitter to vent.

Gaelic football is a lightning fast game these days. Hurling is even faster but funnily enough refs of the small ball game get grief if the don’t ‘let the game flow’. Some, like Bernard Flynn, reckon football could do with a bit more of that too. Certainly a free count of 51 in a clean game like Kerry/Westmeath is way too high. And if the over carrying call on Foley was repeated throughout the match, that free count would have been in three figures.

Consistency is something we want in all sports. To achieve that other ball games have gone for multiple referees or technology. It has helped. A lot. While putting Hawk-eye into every county ground may be beyond the budgets these days, the umpires must be utilised more to help out referees. How the man on the post in the Laois/Monaghan game confirmed the Colm Kelly ‘crossbar’ goal, correctly, was an excellent example.

The feast of Gaelic football served up last weekend was bound to throw up some issues. It just threw up too many really vital, game-changing ones, all hinging on the old bug bear of consistency. If the GAA really want players not to let their fingers do the tweeting, then they shouldn’t give them an excuse every week.