DAVID COLDRICK ADMITS he abuse he receives as a referee has lessened as he became more experienced, but it’s the newer whistlers that tend to receive the brunt of it.
The inter-county referee said he was in his early 20s when an incident took place in a Meath club game where he received verbal abuse that made him seriously think “about refereeing and whether it was for me.”
But in recent years, social media scrutiny has increased. Coldrick was caught in the eye of the storm during the summer after the Galway-Armagh All-Ireland quarter-final.
He sent-off Sean Kelly and Aidan Nugent at the start of extra-time, while an eye gouge by a non-playing member of the Armagh squad went unpunished.
“At national level, we’ve all experienced that kind of thing,” he says of the criticism after that game.
“That game obviously had it all. It had the good, the bad and the ugly. And you don’t just like switch off, you don’t. You do have the day job on the Monday, but it’s in your head for a couple of days afterwards. For me, I’m not on social media.
“Others obviously are and that’s, that’s absolutely fine. The mental piece is something that has become probably a bigger thing over the last number of years, probably with the increased attention.
“But we do have some supports in place, let’s say in terms of, a psychologist, that’s helping us at national level.”
Speaking at the launch of the GAA’s Referees Respect Day, Coldrick recalled a time when he seriously considering giving up refereeing.
“It was maybe five years after starting refereeing and I was doing a senior derby match in Meath between Navan O’Mahonys and Simonstown. It was a tight game.
“It was decided by a quite late penalty, so in the aftermath of that, there was a lot of verbal abuse, not physical abuse. But that’s certainly made me think about refereeing and whether it was for me.
“Ultimately, I suppose at that stage, I personally had a good support network. Then there were others in Leinster that I would have spoken to that kind of got me past that. But it certainly was the closest I came to quitting from a refereeing perspective.”
As he gets older, the Meath native feel the abuse has lessened.
“I would have found that for whatever reason the fact that I am more experienced and have the years behind me, it’s not that I don’t get abuse, but I don’t tend to get as much abuse. Like what those new referees get in the first couple of years. What I would have gotten in the first couple of years, that has definitely got less.
“It’s not to say that it’s it’s non existent, it is there, but it’s not as much as from my early years in refereeing.”
He believes clubs shout take responsibility for abuse directed by their members at officials.
“I think in some ways, it’s easy to have ‘Give Respect, Get Respect’ on your shoulder. Okay, that’s all you just need to see it there, but I do think that the sanctions piece, I think that there are certain rules that at juvenile level would actually help the young referees coming up. The guys that are actually within that two-to-three-year zone of ‘like, am I going to keep this going?’
“I think it is partly sanctions but it’s not just sanctions for the individual, I think it’s trying to broaden out the responsibility on clubs and the accountability on clubs.
“Yes, the individual needs to take responsibility, but I know of instances where an individual mentor at a juvenile level is suspended, and the club is fined. But actually the fine is paid by the individual. So therefore the club doesn’t really have to take responsibility.
“He goes out and he does it again, which, in one particular instance I know did happen. He got a longer ban, he got a 48-week ban. He still paid the fine himself and the following week that juvenile team are in a county final and he turned up, and he started again.”
