All-Ireland officials Sean Hurson and Colm Lyons discuss solutions to recent examples of referee abuse

As the GAA prepares for its 'Respect the Referee Day' this weekend, the association is making moves to foster a healthier culture surrounding its match officials.

Amidst some high profile incidents of alleged assaults in recent weeks, there is a hunger for change.

"We're human and we have families. People forget that and see the man in the black jersey as someone who has nothing to do with the association," said Seán Hurson, who refereed the 2022 All-Ireland football final.

"We want everyone to reset and evaluate what the role of the referee is within the association.

"This last number of weeks or months there has been a high number of incidents and while the committee has been doing work in the background, it has become of national interest that this is not good enough and now is the time to change it and for some supporters to re-focus on how they conduct themselves at games and coaches as well.

"I think [the new] initiative actually allows people to say, 'maybe I need to change the way I do things. Maybe being part of the association where we all belong, we are actually alienating elements within the association.'

"At the moment referees are the focus and it gets forgotten that referees are all club people.

"I'm heavily involved with my own club. I'm on the committee and a coach. We all are volunteers because we enjoy it and we love it."

'Nail the perpetrators rather than blaming the referees'

Colm Lyons, who refereed this year's hurling showpiece, feels that there needs to be a mindset shift amongst supporters, players and all those involved.

"We have mainstream media, we have our media in the paper and social media. We also have our spectators who are also involved in social media who at times can put up negative tweets and make Facebook comments and that's something that maybe isn't monitored. There's a lot of trolling that goes on about referees," he said.

"The GPA had a report recently, Tom Parsons spoke about the impact of abuse on high profile players in terms of Division 1 games. That study hasn't been done on referees. I've no doubt the figures would be actually higher for referees who have gotten abuse.

"I'd like to emphasise the positive feeling about refereeing. If you talk to referees they enjoy refereeing but I do think there has to be an onus on journalists to be less critical thinking about viewing certain high profile ex-players, managers, turning the narrative around from 'oh, the referee got it wrong' to putting the onus on the player putting himself in a position to get a red card. That's what I would like, our mainstream media journalism would step up a little bit and be more investigative and nail the perpetrators rather than blaming the referees."

But he feels that no matter what supports are put in place for referees, there will be controversy regardless.

"One of the big pillars there is about improving support for referees. In rugby, on-field decisions are contentious. They're reviewed [by] the TMO, and at the end of the day, in the biggest game of the recent past, the [question] was, 'was the Australian player time-wasting?' 'Was the referee right or wrong?' And they have TMOs," he explained.

"In soccer, they've brought in the VAR. There's always going to be comment on whether a decision is right. Nobody is from a neutral base. We're all coming from a different perspective. I think we have to have a tolerance of different perspectives.

"If I'm walking down the street as Colm Lyons in my civvies, why should I be treated any differently when I put on my referee's jersey? I should be treated with the same respect, the same tolerance that we would expect for anybody."