A VETERAN GAA REFEREE from Dublin has given an insight into the abuse referee's receive at underage level.
Dublin referee Thomas Gleeson was speaking at a media event in Croke Park on Thursday. Gleeson attended the new ’Respect the Referee’ campaign from the GAA and told the media of time he was physically assaulted after doing his duties for U11s game in Dublin in the year 2000.
“In Dublin GAA there are skill points awarded so after a match I said a certain club won,” Gleeson explained.
“The manager of the other team came up and said I was wrong. He followed me all the way out to the car and basically pushed me just before I got into my friend’s car.
An inter-county hurling referee has described the physical abuse he suffered early in his career – including being followed to his car after an under-11s game https://t.co/yN2YBSnJkJ
— Independent.ie (@Independent_ie) October 14, 2022
Since then, he's claimed nothing has happened since, but a wave of attacks have started to creep back into the games. A match official was attacked in Roscommon in August in a minor game, and the same thing happened in Wexford during another underage match last month.
“That was three years into it. Since then, nothing has really happened. More verbal stuff than anything. Again, I had the right people around me, the right surroundings around me, to keep refereeing because it was something that I was really enjoying and I wanted to keep doing," he added.
The manager responsible for assaulting Gleeson received a six month suspension after he reported him to his club coordinator.
“At the end of the day, it shouldn’t happen. Because if that happens to maybe one or two other lads who don’t have what I had in place, or if I hadn’t the right people around me, where would they or I would be today would be ominous.”
Gleeson was the man in the middle for Kilmacud Crokes and Ballyboden St Enda’s last weekend. He also worked for Clontarf outfit Scoil Ui Chonaill in the past.
The experienced match official believes that silent side-lines must be the way forward.
“You have parents roaring and screaming from the side-lines, but they don’t know the rules. So, the referee could be 100% right and the parents could be 100% but then the referee will think that he or she is not doing a good job and then everything goes all over the place.
“Definitely silent side-lines is something that the GAA overall should be looking into, rather than just in each and every club every so often putting it in place, every club should have it in place.”
It’s brilliant. It helps the referee focus more on the game and on the rules and focus more on teaching the players the right techniques rather than the wrong techniques.”
Larry McCarthy urges greater respect for GAA refereeshttps://t.co/IZApMqG6na
— Munster GAA (@MunsterGAA) October 14, 2022
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