Maggie Farrelly: 'We shouldn’t have to distinguish between male or female referees'

Referee Maggie Farrelly. Photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

Women who take charge of GAA games should not be referred to as female referees, Maggie Farrelly has said.

Cavan native Farrelly is a trailblazer when it comes to females officiating at GAA games, having been the first woman to referee a men’s inter-county fixture when taking charge of the 2015 Ulster Minor Football Championship quarter-final between Fermanagh and Antrim. 

A year later, she refereed her first senior men’s inter-county game, a McKenna Cup tie involving Fermanagh and St Mary’s.

Farrelly has rightly been lauded as a history-maker and for having broken down barriers in her advances in the world of GAA refereeing, but all such commentary has included mention of her gender, something she would like to see change going forward.

“Starting out when I made my debut as an inter-county GAA referee, ‘history making’, ‘barriers’, and ‘gender’, all that kind of terminology was used.

“What we are hoping for in the future is that we can take these words away, that it is no longer about gender, that it is just a referee that turns up to referee a game, that we shouldn’t have to distinguish between male or female referees, that it is just a referee, and hopefully that these headlines will be diminished, the glass ceiling is broken, and that many more people will follow in the footsteps of the likes of myself,” said Farrelly during a Sport Ireland webinar focused on women in officiating.

Farrelly said it is vital when national governing bodies are recruiting referees that all associated material and imagery is not geared towards one specific gender as this can be a deterrent to women putting themselves forward.

“The images that the NGB is using to try and recruit referees, that it is open to everybody and it is user friendly in terms of the language that is used, that it is not specifically looking at one gender or one specific person. The language and the images that are used is hugely important.”