Farrelly patiently pursuing dream All-Ireland final gig

THE BIG GIG: Leading GAA referee Maggie Farrelly at SuperValu’s launch of the GAA All-Ireland Senior Football Championship. Pic: ©INPHO/Dan Sheridan

Seven years after breaking new ground by refereeing a men's senior inter-county game, Maggie Farrelly is still patiently pursuing her All-Ireland final dream.

The Cavan native was the first woman to officiate at a male inter-county game in Croke Park when she acted as a fourth official for the 2014 Dublin v Kerry NFL game and, two years later, refereed a McKenna Cup game in Ulster.

Almost a decade on from that landmark Croke Park outing, she has yet to referee a men's Championship game but is in her second year on the national panel of match officials and was on the line for the recent Tyrone v Monaghan contest.

Farrell, a brand ambassador for football Championship sponsors SuperValu, said that she is happy with the pace of her progress and that she ultimately wants to emulate fellow Cavan native Joe McQuillan by reffing a men's final.

"Of course, I think it's everybody's ambition once you get to this level," said Farrelly. "You'd like to put yourself out there to be in that position. It's like everything else, you're not just going to sit at a plateau and think, 'This is it, this is my dream here' when in reality everybody wants to be out in Croke Park refereeing an All-Ireland final.

"Whether it comes to me or not, I don't know. Of the 39 referees that are on the (national) panel, some have accomplished that and my fellow Cavan referee Joe McQuillan has done it on four occasions so the aspirations are there for everybody."

Farrelly, who was the referee for last year's All-Ireland ladies' football final between Meath and Kerry, is hopeful of making similar progress in the men's game.

"It's about being patient and being resilient to the fact that I'm the first woman," said Farrelly who works for Donegal Sports Partnership as an education and training coordinator.

"So be it, at the end of the day I'm a referee, I do the same rules' test, the same fitness test as my male counterparts and I'm treated no differently.

"That was the thing for me - I felt that the opportunities were there and I had to be patient. I was on the national panel last year and I'm grateful for that and I was on the national panel this year but to be on the Championship panel is very different and it is very difficult to break into it after less than two years' on the (national) panel."

Farrelly said the reality at the moment is that convincing people of any gender to take up the whistle is increasingly difficult.

"At home, our manager is a club player and he represented Cavan over-40s and he said under no circumstances would he ever, ever go out to referee a game and that's down to the fact of the amount of abuse that referees do get," she said. 

"That's the unfortunate part about it.

"We all have the experts sitting in the stand just ready to ridicule somebody and probably the most frustrating part of it is that they don't actually know the rule themselves."