Christy O'Connor: Huge shortage of top hurling referees but is system flawed?

Twelve days before the 2023 All-Ireland hurling final, John Keenan was sitting in the kitchen of his home in Wicklow with his wife Annette when his phone rang.

As soon as he saw Donal Smyth’s name flash up on his screen, Keenan took a huge breath. He had been hoping for a call earlier in the day so he wasn’t sure if Smyth, the GAA’s national match officials manager, was asking him to be a linesman, fourth official, or to do the job he had craved on the biggest stage of all.

‘What are you doing on Sunday week John?” 

 “You tell me,” replied Keean.

“You’re refereeing the final.” 

 Keenan had to step away from the phone for a moment, having been overcome with emotion. Taking charge of an All-Ireland final had been a dream. And getting the call now was even more precious again because it was Keenan’s last chance to live that dream.

Keenan delivered a fine performance in that final, which was a fitting way for him to sign off. 

Speaking on RTÉ after the match, Donal Óg Cusack was so impressed with the Wicklow official that he called on the GAA to change their laws in order to allow some of the best referees in the game to continue in the sport beyond their 50th birthday.

“We haven't got that many good referees in hurling and it's a really challenging thing to be a referee in hurling,” said Cusack. “It strikes me that we should be doing everything we can to hold onto the likes of him.” 

A few months later, Wicklow GAA club delegates unanimously passed a motion calling for the age limit of inter-county referees to be increased from 50 to 53 at the annual county convention. Yet the motion never made it as far as the floor of national GAA Congress a few months later as it only applied to a regulation, not a rule. 

The motion was considered by Central Council but that body decided against amending a regulation that’s been in place since 2010 as a means of incentivising younger referees.

The regulation solely hinges on that point as Professor Niall Moyna, who oversees the fitness supports and tests of national match officials, said last year that there was no physiological reason why referees couldn’t officiate inter-county games beyond the age of 50.

WASTE

It was appropriate that Keenan went out at the top, but it also seemed a waste of talent at a time when hurling and football – especially hurling – has been losing too many good referees.

Paud O’Dwyer officiated in both the Munster and Leinster senior hurling championships in 2023, but by 2024 – similar to Keenan - he was ineligible to be considered for the national panel because of the age limit.

O’Dwyer made representation about changing the rule but it came to nothing. “I can understand some of the reasoning behind it, but overall it doesn’t make a lot of sense,” said O’Dwyer a few months back. “If referees at the age of 52 or 53 are passing fitness tests and performing on the field, I don’t see why they can’t continue.

“There could be a rule that if they fail a fitness test then they are gone. The GAA is crying out for referees. There are not a huge amount of young lads coming through. Sooner or later it might come back to bite.” 

Before the rule was changed, former referee Pat McEnaney said that “there are too many referees over 50 who are clogging up the system”. 

However, there was a huge pool of refereeing talent in the system back then, while there is a shortage of top-class referees in hurling now.

“The system just doesn't work,” said former referee Rory Hickey earlier this year. “Imagine telling TJ Reid, ‘We have enough of you now because you're 35’. John Keenan and Paud O’Dwyer are two of the fittest lads in the country, so there'll have to be a rethink. We just can't lose refs like that."

RETROGRADE

Not everyone though, is in agreement. Barry Kelly retired from inter-county refereeing in 2017 at the age of 48 but continued to act as linesman for a period. 

As an inter-county match official tutor, he supported the age limit “It would be a retrograde step to lift it,” said Kelly two years ago. “At 50 plus, it’s not easy to keep pace with the modern game. Obviously, some lads could cope with it, but it would be strange considering other organisations have an even younger age limit. It could be another stick to beat referees with.” 

The age limit is also heavily connected to recruitment difficulties, which almost every county is experiencing. But the restriction is still framed around the same principle as to why it was introduced.

“It benefitted me,” said Keenan on Colm Parkinson’s ‘Smaller Fish GAA’ podcast recently. “When I first came onto the national panel in 2012, Barry Kelly, Brian Gavin and James McGrath were there after having done probably eight or nine All-Irelands between them. We were probably saying ‘Move on lads, give us our chance’.” 

It took Keenan until his last chance to be given that precious opportunity. Is that right that he never got the chance to even referee again? Yes, and no.

There is a shortage of top-class hurling referees but this is not an ageism argument. It is a huge loss to lose top-class referees, but those referees striving to get up the ladder will never reach the top rung unless the guys above them have moved off.

And Keenan saw that himself first hand.