Referees in several codes have come under some severe scrutiny in recent times and, no doubt, this trend will continue. Personally, I never had any serious problems with referees in my long lost youth but then those were more innocent days when respect for authority of all kinds was keener and less questioning than it is now. In more recent times some silly and quite most fruitless criticism of referees is emerging from self-designated "analysts" who spend the better part of a week going through video tapes of matches with a stopwatch and a computer "analysing" again and again and finally reaching "conclusions" and promulgating detailed statistics about matches they might not even have attended.

One can only wonder what purpose this barren exercise is supposed to serve. For sure it serves no logical or progressive purpose once the egotism of the individual is set aside.

These negative posturings suggest that the people who go to the trouble of making their deductions with the help of a slow-motion replay button are not really interested in the games, the players, the spectators who are turning up in ever increasing numbers to watch, the administrators and coaches and so on. The message seems to be that these dedicated people are either being cheated or are wasting their time.

The strange thing is that in games such as professional rugby and soccer, referees are paid in buttons compared with the people who play the game. In Gaelic games, referees get little more than abuse.

Of course there are good, bad and indifferent referees. The same applies to players and, dare one say so, analysts and commentators. It is widely accepted nowadays that Gaelic football is practically impossible to referee according to the rules without destroying it as a spectacle.

Yet, this year has produced three of the best games of football we have seen for many years. The Mayo-Galway Connacht semi-final got rave notices from all concerned, the Offaly-Meath Leinster final was, by any standards, a classic, featuring fervent commitment, brilliant scores, hardluck stories, heroics and a huge upset. Then, last Saturday the minors of Tyrone and Kerry produced another heart-stopping match which needed extra time to divide the teams.

One seasoned Kerry campaigner commented afterwards that it was as good a match as he had ever seen but another of the same ilk shook his head before saying: "Where do they get them bloody referees". Well you pays your money and you takes your pick but even the most disappointed of Kerry supporters was ready to admit that the match lived up to the finest traditions of the minor grade.

No matter how critical of referees we may be, the fact is that the games cannot go on without them.

I read recently of a junior soccer referee who had decided to hang up his whistle after 25 or more years of whistling because of the verbal - and threats of physical - abuse he was getting from parents of players in an under-14 league.

Some time ago a teacher in a Dublin school told me that a Saturday under-16 league had to be switched to Wednesdays so that parents, who were being constantly disruptive, would not be able to attend.

It is all very well for some, sitting in front of a video recording of a match with a stopwatch in hand, running and re-running a match back and forth to detect every little transgression.

It is a different thing entirely to be out in the middle of the pitch with a whistle and a notebook trying vainly to keep up with 30 fit young men determined to make a name for themselves in history and willing to stretch the unfortunate referee's patience and endurance to the limit.

Let us not forget that referees, too, must spend a lot of their personal time getting and keeping fit, often training all alone through wintry nights. It is a job which calls for considerable commitment and we should be glad that so many are prepared to do it. It is a far more admirable thing than sitting in front of a television set performing the job vicariously.