Cork referees' chief Niall Barrett says change of culture towards officials must be ongoing process
Niall Barrett makes a presentation on behalf of Cork County Board to Colm Lyons, Nemo Rangers, before he reffed the All-Ireland hurling final.
CORK County Board referees’ administrator Niall Barrett is pleased with the level of uptake among new recruits, but he feels it’s vital that respect initiatives are not just one-off events.
Last weekend was the national Respect the Referee Day, an initiative in the wake of multiple recent incidents around the country.
While Barrett welcomes such moves, he points out that any change in approach will take time and must be an ongoing process.
“All match officials want is some respect and appreciation,” he says.
“It needs a huge cultural change. The feedback I’m getting from referees is that they appreciate what [GAA President] Larry McCarthy is doing but we’d ask him to revisit this in 12 months’ time to see if progress has been made.
“Over a hundred years of a cultural mindset is not something that’s not going to change in the space of 12 months.
“The culture of the referee has never changed, since day one. It’s sort of a mindset – when the GAA started however long ago, the reports would say that two teams met and some fella ‘simple’, or words like that, refereed the game.
“That’s a view that seems to have carried on through the years and people tend to forget that most people refereeing are professional people. In fact, that occupation that seems to be taking it up most at the moment are young gardaí.”
In general, the landscape in terms of attracting new officials is a bright one and the unsavoury episodes from around the country have not proven to be a deterrent.
A targeting of younger potential referees has been beneficial and it has served to keep involved people who might otherwise have drifted away from the GAA.
“Would you believe, in Cork we’ve had the reverse effect,” Barrett says.
“We’ve 40 new recruits just trained up and four of them are female. We hope to have another 20 by the end of the year and most of the people signing up are in the 19-30 age bracket.
“I’d come from the same background myself – I’d have been a pretty poor hurler and an okay footballer. I’d have spent a lot of my time on the bench, looking out, and I’d have had a different slant on things.
“These lads might not be able to play for the first time but they can be utilised as selectors, coaches, administrators or referees. There are areas that people could be involved in but instead they’re often lost.
“In the past, we might have been too focused on the players who had retired from playing but often they were taking a break for a few years or had young families so they couldn’t commit. Now we’re approaching referee recruitment from a different angle entirely.
“Having 300 referees should cover all games – so far this year, there have been over six thousand games played at Rebel Óg level and some of these have been without referees, unfortunately. We don’t want that situation to continue.”
Another situation that Barrett would like to change is the readiness of players to appeal suspensions, which he feels undermines the decision-making of referees.
“The biggest problem that we would have had in the county is that a lot of referees wouldn’t be happy with the overturning of appeals,” he says. “We believe that the same rules should pertain for everybody, regardless of their status.
“We welcome the appointment, very much so, of Terry Brady of Ballygarvan as secretary of the County Hearings Committee.”
Looking ahead, Barrett hopes to present in early 2023 a wide-range review of the state of officiating in the county.
“There’s a group of three of us,” he says.“Colm Lyons is the recruitment officer for Cork and Jim McEvoy is secretary of referees for Rebel Óg. We’ve been meeting every week for the past 12 months or so and we’re going to issue a report in early January.
“It’ll be a detailed account of refereeing and where we are in the county. It’ll be an interesting read, I believe.”
App?
