THE WEEK IN SPORT: Time to cop on over refs
DAMIAN STACK TAKES A LOOK BACK AT SOME OF THE STORIES MAKING THE BACK PAGES OVER THE PAST SEVEN DAYS
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Thursday February 25 2010
OUTRAGEOUS. No not the decision to send Brian Mulligan off with less than a minute played in Sunday's All Ireland club semi-final, rather the aggressive manner in which referee Michael Duffy was "confronted" at both full and half-time.
Yet again the GAA's capacity for nasty, blinkered petulence shone through. Why can't GAA fans, players and managers respect the referee?
You could make the argument that it's a result of a post-colonial disregard for authority. There is plenty of evidence in Irish society to back up the assertion that such a disregard exists, but Irish rugby players and fans wouldn't dream of behaving in the manner that Portlaois fans did at the weekend.
Can you imagine a group of rugby supporters charging out onto the pitch at half-time to confront the referee? No, you can't. That's because it would never happen and if it did there would be uproar, there would be bans and you could be damn sure it wouldn't happen again.
Yet in the GAA it happens with such regularity that the reaction it elicits from most people is a shrug of the shoulder. Yep this is the GAA in the 21st century. An organisation where it's, if not exactly common, but a regular occurence for referees to be escorted from the field of play by members of An Garda Síochána. The GAA's response?
The usual: referees reports and the typical alphabet soup of committees who are going to "investigate" the incident. In other words, they're going to do absolutely nothing.
Mealy-mouthed platidues, kicking doing anything about it to touch. Sure people will have forgotten about it come the end of the week and this being Ireland and they being the GAA, they're probably right.
It's time the GAA took the lead on this issue. It's all well and good launching a "Respect" agenda and issuing press releases – get people to sign up to binding codes of conduct and if they breach it fine them or suspend them. As for the "fans" who "confront" officials the GAA should, at the very least, identify them and ban them from the association and its games (inasmuch as is possible).
People will, and have, argued that different rules apply to the GAA compared with soccer and rugby, because it's an amateur organisation. This is nonsense. For far too long gombeenism has been defended by citing the GAA's amateur status.
This must end.
