Refereeing - a most difficult decision

There seems to be a growing acceptance in sport that bad behaviour, on and off the field, is acceptable. Not long ago people like John McEnroe were subjected to widespread criticism in the newspapers and other media for using bad language on court. This, in a sport which does not involve bodily contact, was unusual, but it has gone a long way since McEnroe roared at an umpire: "You cannot be serious!"

There have been several instances during the World Cup when much more serious transgressions have gone unpunished and many referees have been subjected to criticism for their decisions.

Many of these criticisms are based on the hindsight provided by delayed-action replays - to which referees do not have access. But should referees have access to such a facility before they make up their minds? Here, the resistance of FIFA to such a move must be understood in its proper context.

It is all well and good to suggest that matches at the highest level be exposed to this technology, but the fact remains that only a tiny percentage of matches are televised, so on-the-spot scrutiny would not be possible.

It all raises the question of to how you recruit referees in the first place. Referees don't grow on trees, any more than players do. Yet they are given the responsibility of taking control of matches at a high level and are paid a pittance in comparison with everybody else on the pitch. Last Sunday afternoon in the town of Roscommon, I met a young man called Cathal Martyn, born about 200 yards from where I was born myself, who confessed that he had recently taken up the whistle and that he was finding the experience very difficult.

He told me that it was abuse from the sideline which upset him most. He accepted that players against whom frees were awarded were often critical of decisions, but the verbal abuse from people who seemed to believe that they could influence his decisions from the edge of the pitch was the most worrying aspect of his job. Clearly the experience of a referee in a junior GAA match down in Sligo does not compare completely with that of a referee overseeing a World Cup tie, yet there are relationships. Without referees we simply do not have matches. Therefore we should respect referees a lot more than we appear to. It is obvious that there is no point in throwing money at the problem, either in Sligo or France. No amount of money will turn a bad referee into a good referee, just as no amount of money will make a bad player a better player. What we have to accept is that there are rules covering all games and that referees are needed to enforce those rules.

Never having refereed a match in my life, I have a profound sympathy for all referees. From time to time I have, like everybody else, been critical of referees. Yet I would never volunteer to take a whistle and a notebook and go out onto a pitch. Referees, in my view, should be designated a protected species. Without them we have no games.

It was nice and quite unusual to walk into the Sligo dressingroom last Sunday after their draw with Roscommon in Hyde Park to hear the Sligo manager, Mickey Moran, pay a glowing tribute to Seamus Prior of Leitrim, the referee who had taken charge of the match. "If we had more Seamus Priors in the game, we would be very lucky," he said. One could be cynical about that statement were it not for the fact that Mickey Moran never minces his words for anyone, not even referees. But it surely should remind all of us the value of referees to the games in which we take such interest and from which we gain so much pleasure. It matters little whether they are in charge of matches of minimal importance down the road or if they are exposed to millions of television viewers. They provide an indispensible service and are doing the best they can.

The verbal and sometimes physical abuse of referees is a disease of the heart. This writer knows a number of decent, honourable men who have given sterling service in charge of the whistle and who have abandoned their service because of abuse. It has to be said that while players will protest their innocence on the pitch in conflict with the referee, most of the abuse comes from the sideline from people who should be ashamed of themselves. Let us instead hear three cheers for the ref!