COLM LYONS BELIEVES the media must do better in how they cover refereeing performances at inter-county level.
Citing research from Dr Noel Brick in Ulster University on the welfare of referees, Lyons says the negativity on social media and in the mainstream media towards officials must be changed.
The Cork native feels that doing so would drastically improve respect for referees in the GAA.
“There’s a lot of trolling that goes on about referees,” he says,
“The GPA had a report recently, Tom Parsons spoke about the impact of abuse on high profile players in terms of Division 1 games. That study hasn’t been done on referees. I’ve no doubt the figures would be actually higher for referees who have gotten abuse.
“I’d like to emphasise the positive feeling about refereeing. If you talk to referees they enjoy refereeing but I do think there has to be an onus on journalists to be less critical.
In addition he feels the native being pushed from “certain high profile ex-players and managers” should go from saying “the referee got it wrong” to putting the “onus on the player putting himself in a position to get a red card.”
Lyons added, “That’s what I would like, our mainstream media journalism would step up a little bit and be more investigative and nail the perpetrators rather than blaming the referees.”
Many inter-county managers have suggested there should be a mechanism where referees can come out after games to explain their decisions.
Lyons agrees, even if he feels admitting to getting something wrong is not done across the board.
“It’s all about communication, I think we can all do a little bit better in terms of explaining decisions,” he says. “I think most decisions stand for themselves.
“As referees we’d be the first to put our hands up and say, ‘Look, we got it wrong.’ Does everybody as a player, manager, coach, selector say, ‘We got it wrong?’ Some will, some won’t.
“Referees are actually very open to improving. We want to come off that field and say, ‘Do you know what, there wasn’t an incident that’s going to cause me contention tonight. Will I watch the Sunday game or avoid it?’
“I have family members who will pick up a paper, it does impact in terms of the overall…I think there’s a duty of care to everybody in society to look out for everybody else. The mantra here is the GAA, where we all belong.
“Referees have to be central to that and I would like to see an improvement in the support structures so there’s a better respect for referees.”
Also speaking at the GAA’s Referees Respect Day launch was Sean Hurson, who feels the treatment referees get at inter-county level is far better than the club scene.
“Very much so. You are dealing with inter-county players who are well schooled in media,” said the Tyrone native.
“Because they’re on camera they know what they can and cannot get away with. When we are refereeing an inter-county championship match we know we are going to have a stand-by referee, a linesman, four umpires, a fourth official so we’ve eight officials there.
“When you rock up to a Division 3 club game, you’re on your own in a lot of cases, especially at juvenile level.
“Therefore you’re very isolated and you don’t have the support of your side-lines and perhaps, simple thing, you might have six parents looking after a team and all they’re thinking about is winning and they will push all the boundaries so they can win and unfortunately when it’s a line ball, we’ve all seen in clubs that the direction tends to be one way.
Hurson continued, “We as referees are compromised right away when we try to do something right – a simple line ball that goes out and you have a linesman from the home club who decides to go one way and we as referees adjudicate it to go the other way and already there’s confrontation and the abuse may start and it may antagonise some of the opposing players and that’s where it starts.
“Respect for all decisions – and you’re not going to get them all right – and I think everybody could take a reset.”
