Owens on top of his game
Wexford referee has three All-Irelands under his belt
THEY SAY the sign of a good referee is when you don’t even notice they’re there, but sometimes the spotlight comes searching for the man in the middle, and that certainly was the case for James Owens in last year’s All-Ireland final.
When Kilkenny’s Richie Hogan showed indiscipline by raising his elbow and catching Tipperary’s Cathal Barrett in the head, Owens had a decision to make, and the Askamore man didn’t shy away from that call and correctly brandished a red card.
The nay-sayers will try to tell you that the referee is being overly fussy and not in keeping with the spirit of the occasion, but whether it be a first round Junior championship game or an All-Ireland final, the rule book is sacrosanct.
‘People were saying that it ruined the game, but at the time it was a decision that I had to make and it’s unfortunate that you have to do that,’ Owens said.
‘Referees hate sending players off. We don’t go looking for a reason to send a guy off, the reasons come to us. It was just unfortunate the way things panned out.’
Vitriol being fired towards officials is sadly something that’s commonplace and, despite being one of the top officials in the game, Owens is no stranger to seeing humanity rear its ugly head himself, having been the victim of online abuse in the past.
The Wexford man refereed the 2017 All-Ireland semi-final between Waterford and Cork and was criticised for not pushing for Austin Gleeson to be suspended for the decider for pulling Luke Meade’s helmet from his head.
The Askamore man said he can take the nastiness on the chin himself, but he was deeply concerned about the impact it was having on his family.
‘The amount of abuse I was getting was affecting my mother and father in a way that I probably hadn’t realised. They would have seen in the papers what was being said about me.
‘My father was sitting down with my sister and they were running through comments online, stuff that was quite abusive towards me. My father had had a bypass, so that was a serious concern for me.
‘I’m able to deal with it by not reading it, but I probably didn’t realise that they were caught up so much in what was going on,’ he said.
Owens said referees are also impacted by criticism of their colleagues, and they have a Three Musketeers-style ‘One for All, All for One’ mindset as they look out for their fellow officials.
‘When I go out refereeing there’s four umpires in the car with me, and every decision I make, I’m making it on behalf of them and the two linesmen and every referee in the country. Once one referee gets a bit of abuse, it has an effect on every one of us.
‘We all feel for that referee if it happens. If you abuse one referee, you abuse every referee that’s on the national panel. We’re like a county team. When things don’t go well for them, they get online abuse as well,’ he said.
While having a hide as tough as a rhinoceros is often needed to ply your trade as a referee, Owens insisted, that while a thick skin is important, a passion for what you’re doing is paramount.
‘It’s a love of the game and a love of what you do. A referee loves their job and loves being involved.
‘Of course you do have to have a thick skin, but you take in whatever you want to take in. There’s ways of dealing with a certain amount of abuse,’ he said.
Owens stressed that it’s often agitated mentors on the sideline that cause more difficulties than the players themselves, particularly at a local level.
‘Mentors are not always dealt with correctly and maybe not as strongly as we should be dealing with them. You might report a certain guy from a certain club and you could be back refereeing that club again in an under-age game or something like that, and that same individual is there again.
‘I think a lot of the referees out there would have the opinion, especially club referees, is it worth our while reporting these, because they’re still there? Is the punishment strong enough for what actually goes on?,’ he said.
Owens may be still be only 43, but it’s a quarter of a century since he first decided to hang a whistle around his neck, and he says his late uncle, as well as fellow Wexford referee Dickie Murphy, were massive influences that sent him down his chosen path.
‘It’s going back 25 years ago now. I always had an interest in refereeing and would have been lucky enough that at the time Dickie Murphy was at the forefront of it.
‘I would have been following the progress he was making and what he achieved.
‘I had an uncle, who passed away in ‘92, that did a small bit of refereeing, and he would have said to me that I’d become a good referee because I used to always ask him questions about decisions and that sort of stuff.
‘That would have been another aspect that got me interested in it. He encouraged me to get involved,’ he said.
Owens took his first steps into officialdom by refereeing camogie matches for his own club in Kilrush, and gradually worked his way up to his first local Senior hurling championship game in 2002.
‘We had a referees’ strike in 2002 and the championship was held up by six or eight weeks or something like that, and when it got back I refereed my first Senior hurling game.
‘It was between Shelmaliers and Faythe Harriers, a local derby in Wexford Park on a Tuesday night.
‘Five games later I refereed the Senior county final. That’s what really sparked my refereeing career. I was actually refereeing football inter-county at the time, but the boys in Leinster told me I was being switched to hurling,’ he said.
Owens, who has taken charge of two Senior hurling finals, two final replays and one Senior football final in Wexford, continued to steadily climb the ladder, refereeing a Leinster Minor hurling final in 2005, a Minor All-Ireland final in 2007, an Under-21 hurling final in 2008, and the National League final in 2010.
His career continued on an upward trajectory, and he eventually got the nod for the biggest game of all in 2015, the All-Ireland hurling final between Kilkenny and Galway.
‘It was all steady progress. That’s the way you do it, you’re brought on in stages and not thrown in at the deep end. I was wondering was the All-Ireland ever going to come.
‘That year it was a toss up between myself and Johnny Ryan. We’d be very good buddies and both of us probably felt we could have been picked to referee previous final replays but it wasn’t the case, so it was a relief when I was chosen in 2015,’ he said.
He got the gig again in 2018 and, like Dublin buses, having initially suffered a long wait, the third arrived in the following year’s final.
‘Once you get your first one it’s an awful lot easier to get your second one, and obviously the third one came very quick.
‘I hope I don’t have to wait too long to get a fourth one now,’ he said.
With the speed of modern day hurling, it’s increasingly clear that referees need to be fitter than ever before and stick to strict training regimes, so Owens is no stranger to clocking up the training miles.
‘There’s levels we have to reach at certain times of the year. For an inter-county referee you have to do the bleep test. You have to achieve 16.8 on that.
‘It’s independently run by D.C.U., it’s not being run by Croke Park. We’re also given a training plan. We got an eight-week plan in November and the fitness test was in the middle of January,’ he said.
Similar to players, the coronavirus crisis has put officials on the back foot, but Owens, who is kept busy with his company, Blackstairs Cleaning Solutions, during these trying times, is doing what he can to be ready for whenever the championship springs into action.
‘The 16th or 17th of April was supposed to be our championship fitness test [with referees having to achieve level 17.6 to make the panel]. The last couple of weeks have been very challenging.
‘Obviously we’re more on an individual base regarding training. The travel restrictions have interfered with what we can do. Local referees, Justin Heffernan, Gearóid McGrath and myself, train together from time to time, but obviously that’s been put to one side.
‘We were given a training programme last week. Ideally it would be done in our own G.A.A. pitches, but the G.A.A. announced all pitches were to be closed so that put a spanner in the works of what we were going to do,’ he said.
The experienced official says the single most important thing for anybody eyeing a career as a referee and dreaming of playing a pivotal role on the biggest days in Croke Park, is to start early to give yourself the best possible chance.
‘Looking at the path that I had to go through, from when I became an official referee in ‘98 to refereeing an All-Ireland final in 2015, that’s 17 years refereeing before you get to the top.
‘So if anybody is seriously thinking about it, the advice would be to take it up early and see where you go. It could take you six or seven years to get on to the national panel.
‘The first couple of years it’s easy enough to progress in your own county, but once you get to Leinster level you really find out where you’re doing things wrong and where you’re doing things right and learn to improve your game.
‘If you really want it, go for it and the opportunities are there,’ he said.