By John Harrington

A study by four members of the University of Ulster School of Psychology in Coleraine has highlighted the detrimental emotional impact that verbal and physical abuse has on GAA match officials.

438 match officials were surveyed as part of the study by psychologists Noel Brick, Gavin Breslin, Mark Shevlin, and Stephen Shannon.

Among the key findings of their study were that:

· 94 per cent of match officials had received verbal abuse at some stage in their careers while some 23 per cent experienced physical abuse.

· 9.93 per cent said they were verbally abused in every game they officiated, while 31.48 per cent said they experienced it every couple of games.

· 48.6 per cent of officials agreed or strongly agreed that abuse made them consider quitting their role.

· Abuse suffered by match officials is having a significantly negative impact on their mental health and wellbeing.

· Managers and coaches were the main source of verbal abuse with 84.99 per cent of match officials reporting that. 70.46 per cent reported abuse from spectators, while 66.23 per cent reported it from players.

· Players were the main source of physical abuse with 54.46 of match officials reporting that. Followed by 48.51 per cent for spectators, and 33.66 per cent for members of team management.

We spoke to one of the authors of the study, Noel Brick, to delve into its findings and discuss the negative impact of the routine abuse of GAA match officials and why and how it should be addressed.

GAA.ie: Noel, what prompted you and your colleagues to embark on this study?

Noel Brick: Just to give a bit of background on myself and my colleagues, we're all based in Ulster University and I work as a psychologist both obviously with the University but most of my work is with hurling teams and Gaelic football teams.

A lot of that work is supporting players and coaches. My colleagues at Ulster University are similar, and together we did a lot of work previously on mental health in players mostly. Not just in GAA, but across a lot of different sports.

Two main things prompted this line of research. The first was, two of the authors of the study, Stephen Shannon and Gavin Breslin, they did two reviews over the last five years on mental health interventions in sport. One thing came out of that was that there were lots of studies with players and coaches, but only one with match officials. So that highlighted for us that there's a real lack of research in this area and a lack of knowledge about the mental health needs of match officials.

Then, alongside that, in 2020 a group of researchers based in Portsmouth in England published a call to action paper which basically was a call to action for research on abuse and mental health in match officials.

So all of those things along with our interest in the GAA and our interest in Ulster on mental health research was what prompted this study.

GAA.ie: The findings are quite stark, aren't they?

NB: They are. I suppose the headline figure that 94 per cent of GAA match officials have experienced verbal abuse, 23 per cent physical abuse. In context, the figures for verbal abuse would be pretty similar to what has been found in other sports. I think the highest incidence in any sport has been in ice-hockey in Canada where it was 98 per cent. But that figure for Gaelic games would be equivalent to a survey that was done with English football referees a few years ago where it was 94/95 per cent as well.

The physical abuse experienced by GAA referees is higher than has been reported in some soccer studies. It was 19 per cent for Irish soccer referees, 15/16 per cent for Dutch and French soccer referees in another survey. Again, that 23 per cent is not the highest, it was higher again in one survey on Canadian Ice Hockey, but it is high compared to other field sports like soccer.

Really to a certain extent, certainly for the verbal abuse, the figures aren't that surprising based on what we've witnessed ourselves at games. But they're still very high and something that we want to reduce.

GAA.ie: People obviously don't consider enough the impact of abuse on match officials. You'll hear it at most games and people are probably doing it unthinkingly a lot of the time and maybe dehumanise the person they're abusing. They maybe look at the match official as a 'thing' rather than a 'person'. Clearly though this abuse has a big impact on match officials?

NB: Yeah, that for me was one of the key findings from this study. There have been studies previously that looked at abuse and intentions to quit. We know that it's obviously a big issue in a lot of sports, referee attrition and the numbers of referees leaving the game. What we found in our study was the link between verbal and physical abuse during a game and the mental impact of that.

It leads to higher anxiety, higher depression, and lower psychological wellbeing. And that for me is the key thing. You're absolutely right, I don't think people really consider that what happens in a game in terms of verbal and physical abuse has a much longer-term impact on the mental health and wellbeing of match officials. I think that's really important to highlight and make people aware of, that's there's a longer-term impact and it's not just an impact on referees during a game, it's potentially much more serious than that in terms of the mental health impact.

GAA.ie: It's obviously a critcal issue because not only can recruitment of sufficient referees be quite challenging, the retention of referees isn't easy either. And there can be no games without referees, so this is a hot topic, isn't it?

NB: Yes, one figure in the report from the Oireachtais Committee on Sport that was published in June that really stood out was that within two years of initial training, 66 per cent of the FAI's beginner referees quit. That's a huge attrition for any sport. One of the main reasons identified in that report for this attrition was verbal and physical abuse.

You say there would be no games without referees, and that does highlight that issue that one of the main reasons referees are leaving our sports and probably makes it much harder for sporting associations to recruit referees in the first place is that verbal and physical abuse. So it's having multiple impacts. Having fewer referees obviously impacts on our games, the number of people that play our games, et cetera.

Unless we begin to tackle this issue and support our referees as much as we can, then it will just become more an more of an issue.

GAA.ie: Is what's required a two-pronged approach? Do we need to both foster a greater culture of respect for referees among coaches, players, and supporters and also support referees who have suffered both verbal and pysical abuse?

NB: 100 per cent, absolutely. For me the main goal would be to reduce and ultimatley eliminate abuse from our games. I think multiple strategies including making people aware of the impact of abuse on referees need to be implemented. Then helping the referees themselves is important, and there are multiple avenues of support there. It's support during games so you can help them maintain and optimise their performance as much as they can. But then there are also strategies to help them deal with the stress they experience after abuse. Self-care strategies to support their mental health, et cetera. But also psychological and therapeutic support as well because the findings in our study were that abuse impacted on mental health and having that support available, which I know the GAA has for their referees which is excellent, is so very important.

GAA.ie: It was interesting in your study that managers and coaches were the main source of verbal abuse of match officials. Quite often what you see at a match is that supporters take their cue from coaches and players. So if a coach or player is really animated over a decision, that quickly spreads to the crowd. There will always be a certain herd mentality in a crowd of supporters when emotions are high and that might be difficult to eradicate. So should educating managers and coaches about the impact of their abuse of match officals be a priority? Because quite often they lead the chorus-line in a way?

NB: Yes, this is very similar to findings in other studies of other sports. For verbal abuse, the top three were coaches and managers first, then spectators and then players. And for physical abuse it was players first, followed by spectators and then coaches and managers.

You're right, I think it's very, very important to recognise that. First of all, what starts as verbal abuse very often escalates to physical abuse. And the finding that verbal abuse came from coaches and managers first and then spectators, I think it's important for both of those groups to recognise that what can start as verbal abuse can from them can escalate to physical abuse.

And it's not a surprise that players were first in terms of physical abuse because they're closer to a referee during a game. I think there's a responsiblity to target, for want of a better word, coaches, managers and spectators. And maybe that's easier with coaches and managers in terms of making them aware of the impact of their behaviours and how their behaviours can impact the crowd.

I suppose there can be an attitude that if a manager or coach is doing it then it's okay for you to do it too and that can cause a chain reaction across spectators and players.

It's probably a little bit more challenging to target specators than managers, coaches, and players, but a lot of the recommendations in that Oireachtais Committee report were about educational intervention and making people aware of the impact and how their behaviours can impact the behaviours of others.

Quite often abuse is started by some misunderstanding of the rules. What rules referees are applying and how they're interpreting them. A key recommendation that comes out from a lot of sports too is that there is an onus on players, coaches, managers, and spectators to be fully aware of the rules themselves. Very often a rule that is applied correctly by a referee is debated by those who don't understand the rules as well as the referee does. So that's part of it as well.

GAA.ie: It's often easier for people to abuse others if they dehumanise them first. For example, when a motorist gets angry at a cyclist they see them just as 'a cyclist' rather than as a person on a bicycle with family and friends. Is it important that everyone - managers, coaches, players, and specators - recognise that match officals are also people like them with family and friends. Not just, 'The Ref', but a person first and foremost?

NB: Exactly right. They're an important part of our Association and just as important as the players, coaches, managers, and specators are. We're bringing a whole social element into this and how people view others and how others might be against them in sport, and referees are often perceived that way. The referee is an 'other' outside of our group so that's why a referee can become a target for abuse because they're seen as not being with us, not being a part of our group, not having similar goals as our group, and that's why abuse can often be targeted at a referee.

So in comes that social element of 'them' and 'us', and unfortunately match officials are viewed as 'them' and targeted in that way. And, unfortunately for match officials, that happens from both sides. I'm not a referee, but I'm sure it's very challenging when that happens in a game.

GAA.ie: So, to sum up, there's an onus on everyone here to try harder to show respect for match officials, isn't there? Because without match officials there would be no matches?

NB: I think people need to take responsiblity for their behaviour. The key message for me is to understand the impact of what we do on the health and wellbeing of our match officials, absolutely.