Referee's jaw broken at underage game

[tyroneman]

.A referee was due to undergo a brain scan today following an assault by a parent after an underage football game.
Donal Gallagher, from Termon, Co Donegal, was hospitalised suffering a broken jaw after the vicious assault during the GAA match in Co Donegal on Wednesday evening.
The personal trainer and fitness instructor, who is in his mid twenties, was refereeing an Under-16 Divisional Three final between Milford and Lifford in Convoy when the incident occurred.
Lifford had been ahead for most of the game but Milford snatched victory by just two points in the closing minutes after two Lifford players had been sent off. After the final whistle, the young referee received what one spectator described as "a fierce slap on the jaw," allegedly from the father of one of the Lifford players.
"The Convoy officials did their best to get him to the dressing room safely after the match but the parent of one of the players hit him a right punch," said the spectator.
The injured referee was taken to Letterkenny General Hospital. He was later discharged but returned after complaining of feeling unwell.
Last night he was described as in a comfortable and stable condition. He was due to undergo a brain scan today.
The Chairman of Donegal's GAA Referee Committee Frankie Doherty confirmed last night that an investigation was under way.
"This has done nothing to enhance the image of the game and encourage young people to take up the whistle," he said.
Some spectators claimed that the referee had struggled to control the game which was unruly in its closing minutes.
A number of off-duty gardai who witnessed the events, attempted to break up the ensuing fracas.
County youth officer Liam McElhinney described it as "a very serious assault" on the referee. He said that the Board was now awaiting the referee's report on the incident.
 

From Belfast Telegraph.

F@ckin disgrace. Referees in Donegal should walk out over this if serious action not taken

Wonder if Paddy Heaney feels even the slightest twinge of regret over the sh!te he printed in his article about referees now?

[Lecale2]

Disgraceful. Action needs to be taken by the authorities but I doubt they'll do anything.

What happen to the fella that hit the ref in Tipperary with a hurl? It was videoed and posted on Youtube. Was he ever arrested?

Are you a referee Tyroneman?

[Schkite]

f**king disgrace is right, the parent who did this should be ashamed of such a sc**bag act and serious action should be taken, whether or not it was "out of character" as it's bound to be put down to, like that matters. Some example he's setting for his son. It's bad enough when things happen on the field but it infuriates me when spectators and parents etc. come in onto the field and get involved. I've seen in the past how some underage matches can be impossible to manage for a ref, with some parents being downright pricks thinking that their little darlings can do no wrong and give the refs dogs abuse if they even get a tick, obviously this is an extreme case of that.

[Hardy]

Can some one explain what I'm missing here? Isn't there near unanimity in GAAdom and certainly on this board that the perceived right of spectators to invade the playing area at will is sacrosanct. I can never manage to get my head around the mentality that insists that this is a core value and fundamental to the enjoyment of games while at the same time bemoaning the continuing litany of vicious assaults on referees by spectators.

If we could rely on 100% of citizens to behave peacably, lawfully and sensibly we would have no need for police, courts and laws or for locks, security cameras and defensive weapons. Unfortunately, history and a basic understanding of humanity teaches us that we can't depend on that. A certain percentage of people will abuse any freedom they are afforded. A percentage of these, in turn, will have violent intent. If we refuse to recognise this and continue to insist that no curbs can be placed on the freedom of spectators to go where they please, we are effectively saying to referees (and players) "take your chances". I wish at least we'd be honest enough as an association to admit that, instead of trotting out a parade of hand-wringing officials to condemn the latest atrocity. We know it's bullshit. We know they don't care. They don't even care enough to co-operate with the gardai to ensure criminals who assault our referees are prosecuted.

I'm just sick of it.

[pintsofguinness]

What do you suggest hardy?

[andoireabu]

remember playing in a match at u16 level and at the end there was a parent came on the field to go after one of our players.  think he was 15 at the time.  the parent was in his 50's at least and should have known more sense.  he was pissed because his boy was marked fairly hard and wasn't getting any frees.  Littlle did he know that the managers of our team were both brothers of the player he went after!!

[Hardy]

What do you suggest hardy?

For a start we could stop the hypocrisy of pretending to be concerned about assaults on referees while at the same time demanding that spectators be allowed to go where they like. I appreciate the difficulty of preventing incursions if people are determined, but at least we could make it an offence. We want to protect officials or we don't.

Of course it should also be a rule that any assault in an official MUST be reported to the gardai/police, an official complaint MUST be made and every case MUST be pursued to prosecution.

[pintsofguinness]

What do you suggest hardy?

For a start we could stop the hypocrisy of pretending to be concerned about assaults on referees while at the same time demanding that spectators be allowed to go where they like. I appreciate the difficulty of preventing incursions if people are determined, but at least we could make it an offence. We want to protect officials or we don't.

Of course it should also be a rule that any assault in an official MUST be reported to the gardai/police, an official complaint MUST be made and every case MUST be pursued to prosecution.

Allowing people on to the field has nothing to do with referees getting hit. If some tube of a father wants to hit a referee over a under 16 game no rule forbidding entry to the field is going to stop them.  Making it an offence to enter the field is pointless, it would be ignored at club level for senior games never mind underage games. You're getting worse than these boys in croke park blaming everything on pitch invasions.

There will always be tubes out there who go for referees, there always has been - all we can do is makes sure it's punished severely.   

[muppet]

What do you suggest hardy?

Of course it should also be a rule that any assault in an official MUST be reported to the gardai/police, an official complaint MUST be made and every case MUST be pursued to prosecution.

This would be a good start. Make it official policy now until it can be introduced as a rule of the Association. I think the club involved should be punished as well in some way. For example people will get hot under the collar if you ban the entire club so why not simply withdraw referees for that club's fixtures until they demonstrate what they have done about the assault and what they will do in future to protect referees.

[Hardy]

What do you suggest hardy?

For a start we could stop the hypocrisy of pretending to be concerned about assaults on referees while at the same time demanding that spectators be allowed to go where they like. I appreciate the difficulty of preventing incursions if people are determined, but at least we could make it an offence. We want to protect officials or we don't.

Of course it should also be a rule that any assault in an official MUST be reported to the gardai/police, an official complaint MUST be made and every case MUST be pursued to prosecution.

Allowing people on to the field has nothing to do with referees getting hit. If some tube of a father wants to hit a referee over a under 16 game no rule forbidding entry to the field is going to stop them.  Making it an offence to enter the field is pointless, it would be ignored at club level for senior games never mind underage games. You're getting worse than these boys in croke park blaming everything on pitch invasions.

There will always be tubes out there who go for referees, there always has been - all we can do is makes sure it's punished severely.   

So we might as well all leave our front doors open because we'll always have burglars and all we can do is make sure burglary is severely punished?

[pintsofguinness]

What do you suggest hardy?

For a start we could stop the hypocrisy of pretending to be concerned about assaults on referees while at the same time demanding that spectators be allowed to go where they like. I appreciate the difficulty of preventing incursions if people are determined, but at least we could make it an offence. We want to protect officials or we don't.

Of course it should also be a rule that any assault in an official MUST be reported to the gardai/police, an official complaint MUST be made and every case MUST be pursued to prosecution.

Allowing people on to the field has nothing to do with referees getting hit. If some tube of a father wants to hit a referee over a under 16 game no rule forbidding entry to the field is going to stop them.  Making it an offence to enter the field is pointless, it would be ignored at club level for senior games never mind underage games. You're getting worse than these boys in croke park blaming everything on pitch invasions.

There will always be tubes out there who go for referees, there always has been - all we can do is makes sure it's punished severely.   

So we might as well all leave our front doors open because we'll always have burglars and all we can do is make sure burglary is severely punished?

Not an accurate comparison. 
A comparison to your argument would be that a law against breaking and entering would stop someone from entering a house and murdering it's occupants. 

[Celt_Man]

Jaysus it's not like this board to go off on a tangent before the end of the first page... 

This has nothing to do with pitch invasions, a nutter who is intend on letting the ref have one will have his way regardless of any rules not entering the field of play....

Anyway back to the topic at hand, it is appalling that a ref would get his jaw broken... hope the young lad in question is alright etc etc etc

[Hardy]

What do you suggest hardy?

For a start we could stop the hypocrisy of pretending to be concerned about assaults on referees while at the same time demanding that spectators be allowed to go where they like. I appreciate the difficulty of preventing incursions if people are determined, but at least we could make it an offence. We want to protect officials or we don't.

Of course it should also be a rule that any assault in an official MUST be reported to the gardai/police, an official complaint MUST be made and every case MUST be pursued to prosecution.

Allowing people on to the field has nothing to do with referees getting hit. If some tube of a father wants to hit a referee over a under 16 game no rule forbidding entry to the field is going to stop them.  Making it an offence to enter the field is pointless, it would be ignored at club level for senior games never mind underage games. You're getting worse than these boys in croke park blaming everything on pitch invasions.

There will always be tubes out there who go for referees, there always has been - all we can do is makes sure it's punished severely.   

So we might as well all leave our front doors open because we'll always have burglars and all we can do is make sure burglary is severely punished?

Not an accurate comparison. 
A comparison to your argument would be that a law against breaking and entering would stop someone from entering a house and murdering it's occupants. 

Not at all. I think we agree on the necessity for a tough law and tough penalties for crimes. You're suggesting that's enough and once we have laws, preventive measures are either unnecessary or ineffective, or both. I'm saying that's the equivalent of leaving our front doors open, tearing down the fences and scrapping all the security equipment and saying "that's OK - if a burglar does get in and wreck the place, the law will deal with him". I think you'd find that most people (and the law) would expect you to take some responsibility for preventive action. Accordingly, you'll find that if cases start coming to court, judges will start asking why we're not affording protection to our referees.

It's quite simple to me. I'm unimpressed with people's hand wringing over attacks on referees when they simultaneously insist that the public must be given access to the same referees - i.e. be provided with opportunities for it. The suggestion seems to be  that simply because most of us are not hooligans, to attempt to deny hooligans access to referees is somehow at variance with the spirit of the games because the rest of us would have to comply as well. Bullshit.

[Hardy]

Jaysus it's not like this board to go off on a tangent before the end of the first page... 

This has nothing to do with pitch invasions, a nutter who is intend on letting the ref have one will have his way regardless of any rules not entering the field of play....

Anyway back to the topic at hand, it is appalling that a ref would get his jaw broken... hope the young lad in question is alright etc etc etc

Grand. We can all feel good now about condemning it. Why should we be expected to DO anything about it? It's just nutters. We can't do anything about them. Nothing to do with us.

[pintsofguinness]

What do you suggest hardy?

For a start we could stop the hypocrisy of pretending to be concerned about assaults on referees while at the same time demanding that spectators be allowed to go where they like. I appreciate the difficulty of preventing incursions if people are determined, but at least we could make it an offence. We want to protect officials or we don't.

Of course it should also be a rule that any assault in an official MUST be reported to the gardai/police, an official complaint MUST be made and every case MUST be pursued to prosecution.

Allowing people on to the field has nothing to do with referees getting hit. If some tube of a father wants to hit a referee over a under 16 game no rule forbidding entry to the field is going to stop them.  Making it an offence to enter the field is pointless, it would be ignored at club level for senior games never mind underage games. You're getting worse than these boys in croke park blaming everything on pitch invasions.

There will always be tubes out there who go for referees, there always has been - all we can do is makes sure it's punished severely.   

So we might as well all leave our front doors open because we'll always have burglars and all we can do is make sure burglary is severely punished?

Not an accurate comparison. 
A comparison to your argument would be that a law against breaking and entering would stop someone from entering a house and murdering it's occupants. 

Not at all. I think we agree on the necessity for a tough law and tough penalties for crimes. You're suggesting that's enough and once we have laws, preventive measures are either unnecessary or ineffective, or both. I'm saying that's the equivalent of leaving our front doors open, tearing down the fences and scrapping all the security equipment and saying "that's OK - if a burglar does get in and wreck the place, the law will deal with him". I think you'd find that most people (and the law) would expect you to take some responsibility for preventive action. Accordingly, you'll find that if cases start coming to court, judges will start asking why we're not affording protection to our referees.

It's quite simple to me. I'm unimpressed with people's hand wringing over attacks on referees when they simultaneously insist that the public must be given access to the same referees - i.e. be provided with opportunities for it. The suggestion seems to be  that simply because most of us are not hooligans, to attempt to deny hooligans access to referees is somehow at variance with the spirit of the games because the rest of us would have to comply as well. Bullshit.

Preventive measures are fine but I can't think of any preventive measures that would work in this situation, can you?