Referees must feel they're whistling in the dark at times

On Gaelic GamesThe GAA is doing more than ever to advance and promote the standards of refereeing.

THERE CAN’T be anyone in the GAA who dreads media coverage quite as much as referees. It may be the case good referees should be invisible and their contributions hardly noticed, but that’s seldom how it works out when matches are over.

Occasionally an officiating display may catch the imagination of the public in a good way, but it's been a rare enough occurrence since, as recounted in Jim O'Sullivan's Men in Black, current Cork secretary Frank Murphy attracted approving comment in the pages of the Catholic Standardfor his refereeing of the 1971 All-Ireland hurling final.

Gaelic games aren’t a comfortable environment for referees. The fiercely passionate allegiances are always on the lookout for scapegoats in defeat and if the preponderance of supporters is reasonable enough to take a beating and deal with it, it’s the irrational ones who make the most noise.

Referees are as amateur as the players and yet they attract almost ritual criticism from team officials after the final whistle – regardless of performance. The same officials are frequently tetchy in the extreme about even mild criticism directed at their teams, but with referees the gloves are off.

Media plays a role as well. Newspaper reports are less influential than the unforgiving eye of the camera, which highlights nearly every error of perception or application, but are equally a forum for public criticism as is radio. Former Tipperary secretary Tommy Barrett, now president of the county board, launched a virulent attack on Sunday's referee Barry Kelly on Tipp FM's Extra Timeprogramme. "I didn't like the referee, first of all. I never liked him. He's coming from a county that . . . (pause) when Cork are playing Tipp, it's always a massive game, a strong game, a hard game. You must have a good, strong referee."

Decrying referees because they come from unsuccessful counties is not a new line of attack, but equally it’s nonsensical. A referee’s job is to apply the rules without favour. There’s no birthright to championship refereeing, as evidenced by the absence of any Kilkenny referees from the current championship listing.

Whereas refereeing mistakes are hard for teams to suffer, the fact is any system of human arbitration is not 100 per cent reliable. Given even limited high-tech assistance is only practicable at elite levels, there is no alternative for the vast majority of fixtures in all team sports.

At present the GAA is doing more than ever to advance and promote the standards of refereeing. Performances are assessed and discussed and seminars conducted not just to improve the quality of refereeing but also, you’d imagine, to foster a sense of collegiality among officials and to encourage self-analysis. Already this year there’s been the unveiling of a refereeing development plan in March and at the end of January the launch of the “Respect” initiative, part of whose remit was to elevate attitudes to referees within the culture of Gaelic games.

These are worthwhile ideas because the prevailing climate is very poor, and, unlike their counterparts in professional soccer who, although high-profile and at times ruthlessly vilified by managers, don’t have to go about their business in the community being hounded – at times in their place of work – by the consequences of controversy.

And that’s not even taking into account rugby where, despite growing complications in the professional game, the role of the arbiter is largely respected and obeyed.

That’s not how it works in football and hurling.

First, referees are entrusted with enforcing an ambiguous rule book in respect of the physical contact and the hand pass. Sorting out what’s a foul interference with a player in possession and what’s merely incidental contact can be difficult on video review let alone in real time.

Nor has it taken the recent controversies surrounding the redefined hand pass to highlight that, quickly executed, such transfers are often impossible to adjudicate.

Then when those calls are made incorrectly there’s the prospect of having the mistakes held up to public opprobrium, as they get broadcast on a continuous loop to a soundtrack of disapproval on television that evening.

Partisan opinion is accepted as part of the natural process of critiquing referees. How many times do we have to listen to managers complaining that red card offences shouldn’t have resulted in dismissal because the miscreants “aren’t dirty players” or that the match was “played in a sporting spirit”?

There is very little acceptance if a rule is broken then the prescribed punishment should take effect regardless of the extraneous circumstance.

Small wonder that many referees think twice before taking firm action – their minds furiously computing the consequences for the player in terms of missing a big match and probably the controversy that will follow together with an unwelcome focus on the referee himself.

Congress only recently voted against a proposal that would allow the Central Competitions Control Committee a citing function designed to liberate referees from having to adjudicate match incidents twice, once on the field and then again on video together with the invitation to declare their original decision wrong.

So referees must continue to make very public calls on match situations that they may have already shirked instead of letting the CCCC prosecute the matter in pursuit of eradicating the scourge of foul and cynical play.

Not all referees have bullet-proof self-confidence. They’re as prone to indecision as anyone else and have to make complex calls instantly, mindful that even if they’re entirely correct they’ll still be carpingly criticised by whoever comes out on the wrong side of the decision.

In Men in Black, one official makes the following point: "People say that criticism 'runs off' referees. It doesn't. It definitely affects you and it hurts you. It hurt me at the time and it certainly hurt my family and everyone close to me at the time."

That was Dickie Murphy, the genial Wexford man talking about a controversial decision in the Tipperary-Clare match in 2001, and to whose sunny and happy-go-lucky demeanour there were nonetheless clearly limits.

Murphy was recently dropped from the championship panel, quite possibly because he refused to revise his opinion of some flaking in the Cork-Kilkenny National Hurling League match when asked to review match footage.

That’s another of the quandaries for referees. Murphy at his best was peerlessly able to keep a match running and calm down any simmering tensions by affably applying the rules and at times disregarding them, but the modern game cries out for consistency and that only comes from uniform application of the rules.

Yet applying the rules is often the last thing those involved in Gaelic games actually want.

smoran@irishtimes.com