Who'd Be A Ref?

This season we have gotten through without the high jinks of former years. No one has yet been bundled into the boot of a car for protection. Hurly-waving scallywags baying for ref blood have kept their heads down. No whistler has yet had to have a Garda escort from the hallowed Croke Park turf with the loyal hounds of the county snapping at his heels. We've had our manly dust-ups and punch fests. We've had off-the-ball kidney blows, hay-makers, phlegm battles and carnivals of abuse. We've had free-for-alls, head butting, gouging, pummelling, Kung Fu kicking, forearm smashing, Tai Chi and a little aerial bombardment.

Such bottled passions shaken up at parish, provincial and all-Ireland level, then fizzed out in the terraces and on the pitch, would make you think that referees, like the corncrake, are wavering on the brink of extinction. You'd think that like the rare bird, referees should have the capacity to see at least partly behind their backs, be able to fly at will and assume immediately effective camouflage.

You'd imagine that their examinations (now a curse word in the Football Association of Ireland) should involve the ability to distinguish between sounds:

(1) What is the main auditory difference between this breaking hurley and that breaking shin bone?

(2) Differentiate between this shriek of shattered patella and that shriek of delight.

(3) From 50 metres how can you tell that a gob was aimed at an opponent's eye or the ground beside him?

Difficult questions. But the referee has the answers. You are charmed by the thickness of his skin and by his tolerance of fever pitch verbal abuse. You are tickled pink by his stiff upper lip in the face of outrageous physical violence to either his groin or head and his capacity to have a relaxing drink in the club house bar after a game in which he has sent off five of the home team players.

You wonder what skewed gene makes them do it. It's something you are born to. It is not an acquired taste.

"The attraction of refereeing? That's an awful hard question," says three times All-Ireland finalist Tommy Sugrue. "I've always felt I'd make a good referee. It's like a calling to the priesthood. You either want to be a referee or you don't want to be a referee. I think that people who are forced into it make bad referees."

Twenty-three years whistling, Sugrue (42) is typically stoic in the manner in which he accepts the "side effects" of being a marshall: "Certainly you have to have a thick skin. The abuse you'd get is part and parcel of the game. I was the same myself when I was younger. Sure I gave referees abuse when I played too.

"It's the way you deal with it that's important. I like to have a quiet word rather than make a fuss. I let my feeling be known in my own way. I'd be seen as strict but fair. You have to understand that when a player pulls a jersey over his head he's a different person. It's like going into battle. They see only one colour. But there's ways and means. You are essentially a peace-maker. There's no point in having 30 players against you on a football field.

"I've bad days and good days but my job is to protect the players. These days the players are under fierce pressure to perform from sponsors and the like. It wasn't like that when I started refereeing at 19 years of age. Even at schools level you can see sponsorship creeping in. But the number one rule in the GAA is to protect the player. If you don't do that then you shouldn't be in the business of being a referee."

With the GAA in full spate, rugby began to crank up with the first games in the Interprovincial series last weekend. In rugby, car boots don't come into play very often. Football boots do.

"I had no real vocation," says Alan Lewis, an international cricketer and also an international standard referee. "It was by chance that I became a rugby referee - by chance and by injury. It's the greatest involvement in the game outside of playing. You are part of the theatre. I'm able now to referee at a level that I don't think I'd have played at.

"But refereeing rugby is not like, say, soccer where there seems to be a lot of abuse directed at the referee. In rugby union there is an in-built code that pertains. Players understand that sanctions for back chat are penal. We don't get that sort of personal abuse that soccer referees get.

"I think also that players recognise that indiscretions against the referee can cause their team to lose the game. If you get anything from the players you just move the penalty 10 metres closer to the goal. That could be the difference between winning a game and losing it.

"But television has, to an extent, helped foul play and I think that anything that can improve the safety of individuals has to be positive. Nowadays you also have two touch judges who can spot things and draw the attention of the referee. That's six eyes, not two and with the high profile games you also have the television cameras which can be used to cite players."

At the other end of the spectrum are the coaches and parents and little John Pauls with their Roy Keane haircuts and Roy Keane temperaments. The parents, in their Alex Ferguson grandad specs, are often no better than the fiery Manchester United manager. Fergus Cassidy, a former schools' soccer referee, learned to park his car early so that no one knew which one was his for the under-16 crunch match:

"In one game where they were big fellas I'd to send two of them off. They were just kicking lumps out of each other, no interest at all in playing football. The second guy verbally abused me as he left. I didn't take the chance of hanging around afterwards.

"Generally though there was no problem with the kids but the parents and coaches would shout abuse at you. I'd one guy who followed me around. I thought at first he was there in some sort of official capacity, but he'd roar dog's abuse from the touchline.

"I began refereeing to keep fit and to keep in touch with a game that I love, but also to make some money. You get £6 a game. Under-age matches can sometimes only last 20 minutes each way and you could fit in three on a Saturday and three on a Sunday. In the springtime, when there might be a backlog of games and good light, I'd sometimes get 10 matches a week," says Fergus Cassidy.

"The training and exam you do don't prepare you for what's to come. Sometimes you'd arrive and there'd be broken bottles and bricks on pitch or a couple of horses grazing. The nets would be missing, a goalpost broken and no markings on the pitch. I suppose the FAI thinks you might say `Oh Jaysus, I don't want to do this.'

"The best side of it is when you get two teams on a good day on a nice pitch with two coaches who are genuine football people and the teams play a good game. That's the rewarding part."

Next weekend there will be thousands of referees in action in rugby, soccer, GAA, cricket and tennis. They will get dog's abuse. It's all as clear as daylight.

`Sometimes you'd arrive and there'd be broken bottles and bricks on pitch or a couple of horses grazing'