Abuse Not Justified

The Last Word by Brendan White

(first published in the September 2010 Limerick match programme)

Referees in the League of Ireland get a lot of abuse at grounds around the country week after week, but is it all justified? On the League of Ireland Football Show on Monday evening, Adrian Eames and Deniese O’Flaherty touched on the standard of refereeing in this country.

Though admitting there may be some referees poorer than others, the League does still possess refs of a very high standard, highlighted by the appointment of Alan Kelly and a team of Irish officials for the Champions League clash between CFR Cluj and FC Basle, won 2-1 by Cluj on the opening week of Champions League action. Surely you can’t argue with that? As fans do we just want to hate officials? Do we want to blame them if we don’t win? Or when all the decisions don’t go our way?

While in Dublin last weekend, I went along to see St Patrick’s Athletic play Sporting Fingal in the FAI Cup quarter-final in Richmond Park. I witnessed a pretty good game of football. There was goals scored, goals disallowed, yellow cards, strong tackles and everything you’d want from a Cup game between two of the top teams in the country.

What I also witnessed was a lot of abuse aimed at the referee and his assistants. It really struck me that this was a level of abuse I’d not seen before. There was also a little aimed at the players, though humorous at times, as a certain Fingal player joked with fans about his wages.

St Patrick’s Athletic are a club I respect quite a lot, and are well respected in the League as a whole. They have the proper set up in place at the club; a nice ground, an excellent playing surface, a good team and a very experienced manager in Pete Mahon.

But despite this, I found myself very disappointed with the behaviour of supporters during the match. Some fans seem to think that being a referee is an easy job. I assure you, it’s not. In every job in life, people are going to make mistakes, that’s a fact of life. If you make them in your work, would you be okay with people starting to abuse you?

Every fan is guilty of having a go at a referee for a mistake. But just because a decision goes against your team, is that a free pass to abuse the referee? The referee in question was Richie Winter. He will even admit himself I’m sure that he makes mistakes, but throughout the game, I thought he handled it pretty well, his assistants included. One of his assistants, the unlucky one I’m sure, had to do the line at the near side in front of both sets of supporters, while his colleague ran the line on the other side where no fans were watching.

One decision stood out for me particularly. Two players went for the ball, which rebounded out for a throw. For me the decision was easy, it was a throw-in to Sporting Fingal. The assistant raised his flag and duly awarded the decision to Sporting Fingal and the referee agreed. St Patrick’s Athletic did not agree. Manager, players and fans all in agreement that the decision was wrong, so ‘lets abuse the referee’ time started. Fans up out of their seats, manager screaming at the assistant, and players screaming at the referee. Like most good referees, Richie Winter defused the situation very well; waiting for the players to cool down before yellow carding Dave Mulcahy for his over-zealous argument.

The referee’s assistant in question got a pretty hard time from the fans throughout the game, though he didn’t get much, if anything wrong. His professionalism also stood out to me. Despite being abused and hassled for practically the entire game, he kept his cool and continued to perform.

Anybody else in their job hassled for that amount of time would not have stayed as cool. He didn’t react one single bit. If you were a referee or an assistant, would you take that kind of abuse? I think not. So maybe next time before we abuse a referee, we should all give refereeing a go ourselves and see how easy it is, or if it’s as easy as we think it is.