Attacks on referees, players - Thugs have no place in sports

Last Sunday, soccer referee Daniel Sweeney was attacked after a match in Mullingar. He sustained a broken jaw and fractured eye-socket.

He cannot talk and will take his meals through a straw today. A married father of two in his mid-40s, he was taken to the Midland Regional Hospital, in Tullamore, but his injuries are so serious that he was transferred to St James’s Hospital, in Dublin, yesterday.