Seán Moran: No point in intensifying punishments on referee incidents if you can’t make sanctions stick

This time of the year has frequently caused trouble for the GAA because of the — ehhh — less inhibited behaviour of those involved in club matches. So it has been in recent weeks: one dismal episode after another.

Then by way of grim culmination, a child was attacked by an adult in Thurles on Saturday. Presumably when his club arrived in Dr Morris Park for the Munster Council underage blitz, they had in mind a rapid sequence of enjoyable matches rather than London in 1940.

The gardaí are involved, which is shameful and embarrassing in itself, and so too is the provincial council, which has appointed a subcommittee to investigate what happened and also to ascertain whether the event was properly organised.

There is no particular reason to believe that it wasn’t. Munster GAA have plenty of experience in running these blitzes and the sudden incursion of an adult on to the playing area to confront a child is not a normal occurrence.

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Apart from learning what they can from the incident for future reference there may not be a whole lot the provincial council can do about it. The miscreant may not be a member of the GAA and therefore not answerable to the association’s rules. Either way, it looks like a matter best primarily dealt with by gardaí.

None of this affects the responsibility of the GAA nor the issues mounting on its plate. If the delinquent adult in Dr Morris Park turns out to be a member and punishable, all the better, but he will join a long line of club members at matches unable to control or behave themselves.

Dublin referee Thomas Gleeson said last week that underage matches have become a significant source of problems.

[ Referee attacks ‘cast a shadow over the entire association’ says GAA president ]

“Yeah, I think the problem is, especially in Go Games in Dublin, is that when kids are coming to matches they need to be brought by a parent and what happens is because they are only 20-or-25-minute games, the parents will stay on the line and then one parent will start swearing and shouting and then someone else will back that parent and then it just gets a bit out of hand.”

Ponder that for a moment. Useful initiatives like the wearing of headgear in hurling has washed its way through the system having first been made compulsory at underage. Here though we have the opposite. In this case some of the worst adult behaviour is taking place at children’s matches and conditioning the environment in which they first play the games.

Usually it is referees rather than players who are the targets for misbehaviour, whether from spectators or team officials.

This weekend the GAA rolls out its “Respect the Referee” initiative on Saturday and Sunday. At the launch, association president Larry McCarthy said that the weekend was “very important because it is kick-starting a campaign to try and change the culture of the organisation”.

The GAA is aware that one of the great sources of disrespect for referees is the association’s own disciplinary processes

Good luck with that. McCarthy has consistently raised the issue of refereeing during the past year, so he can hardly be accused of opportunistic concern, but as he himself acknowledges, changing culture is not easily done.

The scale of misbehaviour in Gaelic games remains daunting and for those worn out by its constant manifestation, campaigns about respecting referees probably feel like sloganeering. Will the situation have improved in three years?

The GAA is aware that one of the great sources of disrespect for referees is the association’s own disciplinary processes. Referees are aware of it and talk about how they issue red cards one week and the dismissed player is out on the field the following Sunday.

[ Surviving the trials and tribulations of a GAA referee ]

McCarthy acknowledged that there were often, “punishments reduced or even dismissed on the most minute or infinitesimal technicality”.

A solution proposed was that referees receive training in making their reports more watertight in procedural terms, but that runs the uncomfortable risk of victim blaming or shifting the burden of technicalities on to match officials.

Ramping up the suspensions for those who misbehave, especially towards referees, is all very commendable but if CCC’s and hearings committees are unable to make current sanctions stick on a routine basis, what’s the point of intensifying the punishments?

Munster Council have, coincidentally in the light of the current controversy, engaged in a useful pilot to provide training for those who sit on these disciplinary committees. Such bodies should anyway be populated by the best administrators a county can get because they do such vital work and need to be resilient and independent minded.

But Munster’s approach has merit. Training courses would include an emphasis on knowing the Official Guide and appreciating that its provisions are not to be set aside in the face of emotive arguments — or worse — that have nothing to do with the rules.

Impressing the need for rigour and impartiality could help to improve the quality of the decision making. This would not alone give proper support to referees but increase the chances of misbehaviour being consistently punished, which is the most reliable way of changing any unwelcome culture.

By all means make punishment fit the crime and, as proposed by Wexford, remove limits on the suspensions applicable for abusing referees in order to provide for life bans. But ultimately it’s when clubs are collectively disadvantaged for the wrongdoings of their members that behaviour will change.

This isn’t through imposing fines, which appear to be easily borne or if sizeable, counterproductive to the activities of the GAA. If teams were to lose championship points or face expulsion, misbehaviour would be appropriately disadvantaged and in all likelihood less indulged.

It’s not that hard to identify where punishments start to become a deterrent rather than a tolerable inconvenience.