Seán Moran: What can the GAA do, as open season on referees looms into view?

The hunting season begins on Friday. Arguably, the only creatures more concerned than various species of deer and wildfowl will be GAA referees for whom club championships regularly turn into an ordeal.

A year ago almost to the day, we had the outrageous assault on Roscommon referee Kevin Naughton, arguably the highest-profile incident in 2022′s hunting season. The attack proved to be the prelude to many dismal episodes winging their way through cyberspace to showcase what an awful environment can exist for match officials going about their business.

Around six weeks later, the GAA launched its ‘Respect the Referee’ initiative but as emphasised by the president Larry McCarthy, the challenge required sustained effort: “. . . it’s a long, slow process of changing culture. It’s not going to be instantaneous”.

A sense of what he was referencing is mentioned in an interesting book, How Minds Change by David McRaney. One of the author’s arguments is that humans are ultrasocial animals who value being accepted by their communities more than (they value) being right.

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It’s the grim reality that underpins the toxic echo chambers of social media as well as the current existential threat to US democracy from Donald Trump and his followers – never mind the one-eyed tendency of sports supporters.

So far, one month into the club season, we have been mercifully free of indiscipline sufficiently brazen to make it into the national consciousness but we know not the day nor the hour when someone may upload shaky footage of players laying into each other or worse, team mentors clattering referees.

At this stage Croke Park is completing the roll-out of a programme intended to develop resources for club referees and is still in touch with the University of Ulster whose survey findings were also presented at the Respect launch last October.

Dr Noel Brick of UUJ was the survey lead on the effect on referees’ mental health of verbal and physical abuse. Among his findings were that virtually half of the responding 483 referees felt that they hadn’t received adequate training to deal with abuse.

It’s no wonder that match officials frequently – if subconsciously – default to the less controversial outcome when making decisions.

Last week another interesting survey shed some light on the decisions of referees. Dr John Considine of UCC’s Economics Department was one of a group who analysed three championships’ worth of frees awarded in hurling matches.

There was a distinct and robust tendency for frees to go to the team who was at the time losing a match. The overall figure was 10 per cent more likely to be awarded that way (49 per cent to 39). Although assessing the motivation is purely speculative, Dr Considine believes that it is the referee making the call rather than a player setting out to foul that explains the data.

He also wonders could it be that referees are influenced by an – again unintentional – impulse to keep the match as competitive as possible but within reason, as it’s not part of even the interpretative analysis that frees are being invented to facilitate these decisions.

Are there ways in which the GAA can help, beyond the efforts currently being made to support and better equip those controlling the games?

Arguably, progress has been made in challenging the negative attitudes towards referees even if it was probably unwise for the GAA president to invite a round of applause after the All-Ireland football final only for a round of pantomime booing to break out – David Gough was experienced enough to take in good part.

The final did however pinpoint one issue. In the second-half incident when Gough awarded a free against Michael Fitzsimons for a foul on David Clifford, only to be informed by his umpires that both players were equally at fault, he reversed the award and instead, threw in the ball.

Even though it was a correct call, such advice is not provided for in the rule book. Although there is a competence to draw the referee’s attention to foul play, this doesn’t extend to countermanding a free.

Similarly in the semi-finals, a ‘45′ awarded to Dublin against Monaghan was overruled after the big-screen replay in Croke Park showed that the ball had gone out off Jack McCaffrey and not Killian Lavelle. Referee Seán Hurson had one look and briskly reversed the call, designating a wide.

Again there is no provision in rule for video review to function in a consultative role like that.

Should the reality of both incidents not be recognised in the rulebook? If a correct decision has been incorrectly reached, is the better outcome not to embrace the decision?

As RTÉ analyst Eamonn Fitzmaurice observed in live coverage of Dublin-Monaghan: “The correct decision was got to – whether it’s in the rule book or not, it’s the correct decision.”

As ever, these solutions come with the usual caveats about unintended consequences.

One official pointed out that not every referee necessarily has the same confidence in his umpires as David Gough does in the tight collective of family members, including father, Eugene, who make up his group.

Sometimes, one of the officials can get it wrong and divert the referee from the right course or be as unsighted as he is when something happens. Ultimately, though it’s the referee’s decision to make and any rules amendment would emphasise that as well as enabling advice from line officials and umpires.

It might be something that the Standing Committee on the Playing Rules would like to look at. Otherwise, that great old GAA institution of ignoring inconvenient rules to facilitate a desired outcome will continue to pop up its head.

e: sean.moran@irishtimes.com