On OTB AM this morning former Munster man Alan Quinlan co-hosted alongside Ger to delve into the back-pages from this morning.
Perhaps the most significant story of the day was a Cork Evening Echo piece from Larry Ryan yesterday detailing the many local fights and interventions between team mentors and parents against referees and opposition parents at under-age level at GAA Go events down in Cork.
Quinlan, as he noted, a man all too familiar with these sorts of squabbles during his rugby days, was on hand to lend an insight into this treatment of referees at underage level.
"It seems to be worse at that underage level and it seems to escalate more.
"It’s a serious issue and we know the messages about standing back, leaving them.
"It’s hard to police it as well because how do you police that emotion, these messages keep being sent out to people about that intervention as parents, mentors, how you deal with [it], particularly under-age kids.
"It’s a mess, really, and you just got to keep hammering home that message that sometimes you’ve just got to stand back, let your kids at it."
As a father Quinlan noted that, at times like those, he opts taking a back-seat as opposed to getting involved, like during his Munster and Ireland days.
"It is very frustrating; I’ve been at those under-age games where you’re like ‘Jesus, the referee...
"I’ve made a pact to myself, after playing the sport and being involved in that heated stuff out on the field, to stand back and sometimes my little fella is frustrated or angry with something and he’s maybe looking for me and I’ve had to stand back.
"But you know what, any of these referees, the game wouldn’t go ahead without them and some of the decisions are wrong, some of them are maybe frustrating, but you’ve just got to let go.
"Some of the coaching intervention is a problem as well Ger, where you have coaches from each side, and they’re halfway into the pitch, and they’re dictating what should and shouldn’t happen to the referee or to their own players or to the opposition players. So there is a problem there with that coaching intervention as well."
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