‘AUTHORITY IS BEING ERODED’

FROM BACK PAGE of match officials.

“All our thoughts go to the referee first,” said Martin. “Positive news is that there is no serious issue in terms of the referee, he is shaken obviously, but he is at home and is recovering.

“Only last Tuesday night we discussed it at a county committee meeting with our clubs, we’ve had the recruitment and retention of referees on the agenda of every meeting this year, and purposefully so.

“I think it is an issue, there’s no shying away from it. It’s an issue in our own county but also an issue across sport in Ireland, but certainly in the GAA, we’ve seen incidents in other counties as well.

“We have had a number of serious incidents, I would say, potentially less serious than what we’re talking about today and they have been dealt with very severely by our disciplinary committee.

“But the fact that you have that to deal with in the first instance is very disappointing and it’s one that we’re constantly reminding clubs of.

“We in Wexford have dropped referees from upwards of 70 a number of years ago to just over 50.

“That has implications obviously for being able to run a Games programme. We have had a small number of games that haven’t been able to go ahead.

“From talking to other county chairman, that is an issue across a number of different counties and across a number of different codes as well.”

Martin believes the incidents are illustrative of an erosion of authority across society, and trickle down from elite sports.

He said: “There is an unacceptable level of questioning authority across society, in the GAA it’s the challenging of referees - you see it in professional sport at elite sport and it trickles it’s way down.

“I think we’ve reached crisis point in this at the moment and it’s something all policy makers have to sit down again and see how we can address this.”