New rules making life harder for referees as threat of taxman looms

By Kevin Egan

Twenty-one years ago this month, US TV Network NBC aired the first ever episode of the TV show ‘The Apprentice’, and this ultimately was a key factor in creating a world where the United States of American is seriously considering invading and colonising the territory of an EU state. It’s remarkable what hosting a TV show and being portrayed as some sort of business expert can do for your profile.

It's not the first time, and it won’t be the last, that one relatively simple act or decision would ultimately prove to have far-reaching consequences, exponentially more significant than the spark that lit the fire.

It’s very early to say, but it does feel as if the decision by the Revenue Commissioners to shine a light on individual units within the GAA could yet be every bit as significant, in ways that we can barely imagine right now. What it might do for the plethora of paid managers, trainers, specialist coaches and others that have become so ubiquitous is one question that is being posed.

There are genuine and legitimate fears that the outcome will be a further increase in the cost of such people for a club or a county, though fair to say that there won’t be a huge amount of sympathy out there for club managers who charge up to €600 a week or more for their services, much less the county manager who could be reimbursed to the tune of two or three times that amount, depending on the strength of their CV.

There are huge concerns out there for what this will ultimately mean for clubs and counties who already find it hard to get people to step into chairperson, secretary and treasurer roles. These ‘recruiters’ (i.e., the outgoing officers) will now have to deal with potential volunteers asking themselves if they really want to be involved in an entity where significant sums of cash come in through fundraisers and go out in the form of mileage and other expenses, since the potential for a nasty shock if something isn’t done correctly is huge.

However this column would instead like to dive into the world of refereeing, and how this should be the moment that inspires a much deeper discussion as to where the GAA, and to a lesser extent other similar sporting organisations are headed, when it comes to the recruitment of match officials.

Concerns surrounding refereeing recruitment are a little bit like concerns around the cost of living, or appeals for support for famine and war-afflicted parts of the world. They are real and important but because they never go away, it can be hard to feel a strong sense of urgency. After all, if a particular club was to go all out and try to recruit three or four current or recently-retired players as referees and get them into the system, they know that the email will still go out next year looking for more.

Right now, Offaly is quite well-served when it comes to referees in both codes, and there are at least five or six whistlers for each code that could take on a county senior final and would do a reasonable job at it. Of course it would be better if there were more, but it’s not a crisis here right now, as it is in some other counties.

However this wasn’t always the way, and given the increase in the number of games that take place, the pressure on what can be a quite small cohort of regular referees is considerable. And while the rewards for refereeing half a dozen games per week on a consistent basis aren’t significant, if the decision is taken by the tax man that he wants his share of the match fee, there’s no doubt that several refs will either decide it’s just not worth it, and either scale back the number of games they cover, or give up the practice entirely.

Wrong solution to perennial problem

The issue of abuse of referees, whether that abuse emanates from players, sidelines or the stand, is often cited as a cancer that needs to be cut out of Gaelic games, and no-one would deny that there are longstanding cultural problems in this regard. Offaly has had more than its fair share of refereeing controversies down the years, and in the vast majority of cases, individuals and clubs fell far short of what would be expected of them when it came to taking responsibility.

Yet the new football rules are a recipe for carnage. Firstly they greatly increase the number of marginal, difficult calls that referees will have to make, particularly with regard to whether a long-range point came from inside or outside the arc, and monitoring the number of players in one half of the field, all while play proceeds in the other half.

Secondly, the stringent new rules on dissent are absolutely fine when it comes to clear and unambiguous acts of dissent, whether that’s using bad language at the referee, or questioning their eyesight/judgement/knowledge etc..

The problem is that while there’s no doubt that the aim of the game is to get to a point where hurling and football referees are treated similarly to their rugby counterparts, it’s also true that the referee issues a clear verbal explanation for every call they make in a rugby game. Players are never in any doubt as to why a penalty or a scrum is awarded.

The majority of football and hurling referees may indicate technical fouls, such as making a clear signal for handling the ball on the ground, when it’s a personal foul there is no such clarification, and often no identification of which player is guilty.

Yet in some – but not all – pre-season challenge games, an instinctive “what was that for?” was met with an additional 50-metre punishment, even if it was asked respectfully. Saying that the captain is allowed to enquire is of no value when the captain might be 50 metres away and the player deemed to have been fouled is away on a 'solo and go'.

A small minority of referees will relish having more power. Good referees don’t want to have power, they want clarity as to what is acceptable and what isn’t, and they want it to be obvious to everyone why they’ve made a certain decision. These ‘enhancements’ don’t help them in that regard.

As for the rule that a player must “give the ball directly to the nearest opposition player in a prompt and respectful manner” after their team has been pinged for a foul, this too has caused chaos around the country this month.

Players have been penalised for handpassing or throwing the ball to an opponent, as opposed to handing it gently, and others have been penalised for giving the ball to an opponent five metres away when there was another player three or four metres from the spot of the foul, but out of the eye line of the player in question. An insistence on immediately either dropping the ball to the ground and moving away would definitely have been much more clearer and much easier to administer.

If this move by Revenue is ultimately the prompt that leads to a world of more semi-professional referees paid at higher rates and taking on the bulk of games, then so be it. But if the aim is to somehow draw in more amateur referees who just want to give a little bit back to the game that they love, then surely the focus has to be on making the rules simpler, with far less grey areas and scope for interpretation, making it easier for people who want to facilitate games and players as opposed to wanting to control them.

Maybe this, allied to a change in dissent culture, is the starting point needed to finally stop the shortage of referees being a topic of conversation at this time of year, every year.