Cooney backs female officials

GAA PRESIDENT Christy Cooney has welcomed the possibility of men’s senior inter-county fixtures being refereed by female officials.

“We have female referees in counties refereeing matches,” said Cooney at a press briefing yesterday which showcased the match officials new attire for the coming season.

“If they’re well equipped and they want to do it and they meet the standards that we require, there’s no reason why they can’t.”

The role of female officials in men’s sport has come under the spotlight recently after comments made by former Sky broadcasters Andy Gray and Richard Keys about referee’s assistant Sian Massey.

Neither Cooney nor the association’s match officials games manager Pat Doherty could put a figure on the amount of women currently officiating at male games but it was pointed out that two inter-county referees used female umpires in 2010. One of those was Offaly’s Tony Carroll for last July’s Christy Ring Cup final in Croke Park in which Westmeath edged out Kerry by a point.

Any influx of female whistlers would certainly be welcome given the frequent shortfall experienced at all levels in recent years, although Doherty estimates that there were 1,600 referees recruited nationwide in 2010.

There will certainly be some new faces at inter-county level this year — 10 in each code in fact — while two Grade One refs, Gerry Kinneavy and Aidan Mangan, have stepped down from the county scene having reached the recently imposed age ceiling of 50.

There have been 20 ‘retirees’ from the inter-county ranks although all are still eligible to officiate at club level and most have maintained their involvement as either assessors or in a tutoring capacity.

Their former colleagues will be monitored and supported like never before. The first of a number of seminars testing fitness and knowledge of the playing rules took place last month and a private intranet system has been set up on GAA.ie to dispense advice and education on fitness, nutrition and application of the rules.

Every referee will be provided with an edited copy of each of their televised performances and Cooney was keen to stress that the aim of such a facility would be to provide support and not to highlight errors.

Attention has also been paid to the role of umpires who look set to lose their traditional white coats for the championship in favour of more modern attire but their role will be tweaked in more than just cosmetic terms.

“We’re working at the moment on updating the training course for the umpires,” said Doherty. “That’ll be completed during the League. Umpires who officiate during the championship will have completed a training course and will have passed a rules test. There is discussion around updating or upgrading the umpire uniform. That’s in development stage, there’s no decision made on it but it looks like we’ll have some sort of a change for the championship.”

There will not, however, be any change in how umpires are appointed to games which means that it will still fall on referees to choose their goalside deputies provided they have passed the newly-introduced examinations.

That is as far as the changes will go. With the five-year rule in place until 2015 there will be no more amendments to the playing regulations and Cooney claimed that both managers and referees were united in their gratitude for that.

“Tampering and changing rules on an ongoing basis doesn’t do anybody any good. We made some changes last year. We had a discussion at Congress. We are in a steeled space now and we would like to keep in that steeled space for a while and let the games settle.”