Twelve months ago, it was put to GAA president Larry McCarthy at the launch of the Respect the Referee initiative that the “culture change” he was advocating would not happen overnight. He didn’t disagree.
“Extremely difficult – and it’s a long, slow process of changing culture. It’s not going to be instantaneous. But all of the things we’re talking about: supporting the referee, disciplinary processes, putting out the messages we’re going to be putting out next week are all part and parcel of it. But this is only a once-off.”
Neither has his view proved overly pessimistic. Whereas this autumn has so far avoided the Gothic extremes of a year ago with its weekly drumroll of violent misbehaviour, there has been no shortage of disturbing events. And not in obscure junior B matches either but in senior competition with plenty of profile.
Tullamore on Sunday staged the latest demonstration with a referee being pushed to the ground but the biggest question arising is what is creating the environment where such unacceptable behaviour routinely recurs? Why do so many people instinctively believe that they are entitled to attack or menace officials?
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In the attempt to address this culture, one recourse is to increase suspensions. At this year’s congress, the minimum suspension for assaulting match officials was increased to two years.
As a statement, that’s fine but there’s little evidence that when the red mist descends, a fired-up miscreant is going to make that calculation as they race towards some unfortunate referee or linesman. The deterrent value of a suspension may register with a player who faces time out of the game, but for a spectator it’s less certain.
Who’s going to police it when the suspended individual turns up at a match down a boreen somewhere remote? Or who’s checking that they’re not swilling pints down the club on the Wednesday after being suspended for assaulting a match official – with half the bar buying them drink?
Very often when indiscipline erupts, the instinct is to demand or at least expect action from the authorities, Croke Park or county boards. “The GAA need to be doing something about this.”
What about the rest of the organisation? The ordinary members and club officials – to what extent do they call out unacceptable behaviour by fellow members? Is that a popular thing to do when your club feels under threat as so many – remarkably – do when rules are enforced against them?
In ‘How Minds Change’ by David McRaney, an attempt to understand “the new science of belief, opinion and persuasion”, one of the author’s arguments is that humans are ultrasocial animals who value being accepted by their communities more than (they value) being right.
Cutting through those instincts is frequently what the GAA finds itself trying to do. For many, the concept of the games as recreational activities organised for the enjoyment of thousands, and defined by a set of rules that everyone agrees to accept as soon as they take to the field, takes second place to an atavistic compulsion to win at all costs.
Social media bears regular and depressing witness to what goes on at matches. Only recently, we have seen senior championship footage from a county final where a player on his knees gets nearly decapitated by a flying shoulder charge to his head – an incident that would have had even a rugby referee reaching for red without the need to involve external monitors – but no dismissal followed.
Then in another county’s semi-final, a player approaches an opponent being treated for injury and shapes up to launch a kick, causing the physio to flinch in shock while one of the assailant’s team-mates casually passes by and throws water over both injured player and physio. Again, there was no appropriate action taken.
Last week we had Kilcoo, former All-Ireland champions, challenging the appointment of a referee, something the rules were never intended to encompass but a path to which was opened by a DRA (Disputes Resolution Authority) decision. It was nonetheless a path Kilcoo could have chosen not to travel, but having determined that it suited their interests to go ahead, they did so and created intolerable pressure for the referee and the Down county board.
Alongside the wider culture of rights enforcement that has been assimilated into society through constitutional actions down the decades, the GAA focus has relentlessly been on individual or factional rights with no apparent counterbalance for the common good.
I once asked a senior GAA official why the association didn’t appeal interim injunctions granted to allow players evade the impact of suspension. The answer was that “we don’t do that sort of thing” – in other words, once the player got off it wouldn’t be fair to drag him back to court.
Yet the collective interest in seeing rules upheld would have strongly supported such action.
Thanks to the DRA those opportunistic trips to court don’t happen any more, but there is plenty of evidence that individuals and units are still happy to push disciplinary decisions all the way if they have to. There is no cultural consensus of acknowledging wrongdoing and accepting the consequences.
Playing pitches, far from being sacrosanct arenas of contest, are surrounded by frequently ill-behaved sidelines of managers, selectors and backroom operatives, who at times appear to feel within their rights to abuse the nearest match official.
Mentors occasionally wander on to the field for a word with a player and when matches end, the public pour on – except in Croke Park and even there, that exclusion was bitterly fought as a denial of spectator rights.
Little wonder that overheated supporters consider it so normal to take to the field to do their worst.
Instead of asking what the GAA is going to do about all of this, could everyone else not do more to confront misbehaviour at their level and let its manifest devotees know where they stand.
That would be some culture change.
