THE physical peak of a Gaelic footballer or hurler is generally regarded as being between 28 and 30 years of age.
That’s when the body has done its acclimatising but isn’t quite ready to fall off the far side of the cliff, and the mind has consumed enough information about the game to have manufactured instincts that perhaps didn’t exist naturally.
The shoulders are their broadest and strongest.
Yet the actual plateau for the average human body comes at 23 or 24 years of age.
It is at that point that it starts to regress. In sporting terms, that particularly applies to the ability to sprint. Sports science has found ways of reversing the natural regression, but there’s a reason that there aren’t too many playing inter-county football beyond the very early 30s now.
A lot of why players are in the shape they’re in is because of their access to everything that they need to get themselves in that shape.
Even a semi-serious inter-county setup now has a full-time strength and conditioning coach and a nutritionist. Players have permanent access to gyms. They’re armed not only with the education around them, but with the interest to delve deeper themselves.
That tied in with Derek McGrath’s argument on The Sunday Game at the weekend, about how players are arming themselves with so much knowledge from their time in the institutions of third-level education.
The physical bar has risen so high for players.
Sean Cleere found himself in a storm at the weekend after his display in Tipperary’s win over Wexford.
He is 36, just above the threshold for most inter-county players. No disrespect to the Kilkenny whistler, and without having seen what lies beneath the bonnet, he wouldn’t be shredded in the same way.
What inter-county players put themselves through is an extreme form of fitness training. The extremes of it have become the norm out of necessity. The top teams in football and hurling have set extraordinary levels that the rest are doing their best to match.
That continues to drive physical improvements among players. But senior inter-county players are generally all in the 19-33 age bracket (the upper limit of which might even be stretching it).
The panel of inter-county referees are almost all in the next age bracket up. None of the current national football or hurling referees were, as far as can be ascertained, in any way regular on their relevant inter-county playing squads.
Therefore they went through their 20s without any reason to go to the extremes. And by the time they reach their mid-30s, which is generally when an inter-county referee will start to make real headway, they’re trying to reverse the irreversible.
So back to Sean Cleere.
A hurling ball can travel between 100 and 160mph. If the game breaks down at one end, it can be transferred to the other in literally two seconds flat.
If you sent any of the players out in a black uniform with a whistle, even one as lithe and athletic as Lee Chin would struggle to keep up with play.
It is a physical impossibility for anyone, and even harder still for a referee. They have to meet certain fitness criteria that do require a level of physical training, but it’s a level that isn’t in keeping with the game itself.
The games are getting faster and the hits are getting harder. Players are more cynical and diving has become commonplace in football especially.
But how do you referee Gaelic football? Nobody in any authority has properly defined the tackle. Nobody.
By the letter of the law, every single incident of physical contact that doesn’t dislodge the ball clean is a foul.
So if referees did it by the book, there’d be 300 frees in a game. So they all have to apply an interpretation, and everyone’s interpretation is different.
Defenders are coached in the art of near-hand tackling, of the half-foul by grabbing the arm and then quickly letting go, of stopping a man up by pushing him back and then slapping down at the ball. All of which are technically fouls.
Referees are getting it wrong because they can’t get it right.
In hurling, they’re being left out on their own with 14,500 square yards to cover with the ball flying at 100mph over their heads in a sport played by physical specimens a decade younger than them.
Being totally honest, we’re still seeing bellies in black. That’s not the fault of any individual referee, rather an issue with how they’re looked after and educated.
Mistakes are being made, and the density of commentary on the games are making life more and more and more difficult for referees, when it’s not they who are at fault.
The GAA is hanging referees out to dry.
It is time for professional referees. Let’s not be naïve here. Half the people involved in the GAA now are employees and the other half are getting decent expenses.
Croke Park would have no problem spending €26,000 a year on a few marketing or digital whizzes.
Referees need to be brought in in their late teens and early 20s, and given the same access to physical conditioning and nutrition as the men they’re going to be running after.
But in order for them to fully buy-in to it, they would need to be paid at a level that makes it attractive, but that also brings with it a high level of internal scrutiny and accountability for poor performances.
Get them in, get them fit and get them out on the pitch much earlier. Make them professionals and have them doing two and three club games a week in their apprenticeship, building up more quickly into club championship. There’s no reason that you couldn’t have a 26 or 27 year-old doing big senior inter-county games if they’d had seven or eight proper years of learning and growing under them. They’d still be older than most of the players.
Put two referees on the field in hurling, and write a proper definition of the tackle in football that reflects the way the game’s actually played rather than an idealistic notion.
Refereeing is a mess, but it’s not the fault of the referees. The world around them has moved so far on and the GAA hasn’t done enough to keep them up with the pace, literally and figuratively.
It’s just not good enough any more. Everyone, refs included, deserves better.
