By John Harrington

Thomas Gleeson is likely to be recognised a lot more on the street now that he’s the face of the GAA’s national Respect the Referee Day which takes place the weekend of October 22 and 23.

He’s a fitting ambassador for the initiative, because as well being a member of the national panel of inter-county hurling referees, he’s plugged into the circuit mains of Gaelic games in many other ways.

He coached his club Naomh Fionnbarra to the Dublin SHC ‘B’ championship title in 2020, and this year coached both the Dublin minor camogie team and Scoil Ui Chonaill senior hurlers.

He also does great work as Scoil Ui Chonaill’s Games Promotion Officer, so in all sorts of ways his life revolves around Gaelic games.

Gleeson can pinpoint to the day when his obsession with the sports began.

He was a pupil in Scoil Plás Mhuire in the North East inner city of Dublin when his school principal, now TD Finian McGrath, asked him to take part in a GAA skills competition taking place in the GAA Museum in Croke Park.

The nine-year-old came out on top against pupils from an array of Dublin schools and was spotted by a coach from Naomh Fionnbarra GAA club who asked him to join their club.

Little did he know it at the time, but Gleeson’s life had just been diverted down a significant path.

“Alan Brogan presented me with a football and Dublin jersey that day,” recalls Gleeson now.

“It was just brilliant. Since that day my life has revolved around the GAA and it's the best thing I've ever done.”

Gleeson is also a fitting ambassador for GAA’s national Respect the Referee Day because, sadly, he knows just how distressing it can be when that respect isn’t shown.

Early on in his refereeing career, he was physically assaulted after an underage club match.

“Physical abuse, it happened once when I was only after starting refereeing,” said Gleeson.

“I was refereeing three years. It was an U-11s game. In Dublin GAA there are skill points awarded so after a match I said a certain club won.

“The manager of the other team came up and said I was wrong. He followed me all the way out to the car and basically pushed me just before I got into my friend's car.

“That was three years into it. Since then, nothing has really happened. More verbal stuff than anything.

“It's good that I had strong people around me who refereed at adult level at the time and got a hold of me and basically talked me through keeping refereeing rather than just giving up because when something like this happens, especially to a young lad who is coming through, there's going to be severe consequences.

“It's not only about quitting refereeing, it's about his own health, his own life structure going forward also.”

Gleeson referees at the highest level of the game now where he deals with players and mentors who understand the rules well.

Where he thinks referees have the most challenging time is at underage level where they are often targeted by parents who are ignorant of the rules.

This is particularly stressful for the referees who are only teenagers themselves and so are often traumatised by being verbally abused by adults.

“Yeah, I think the problem is, especially in Go Games in Dublin, is that when kids are coming to matches they need to be brought by a parent and what happens is because they are only 20 or 25 minute games the parents will stay on the line and then one parent will start swearing and shouting and then someone else will back that parent and then it just gets a bit out of hand.

“The referees who are refereeing at Go Games could be 14/15/16 so only new out. It's an awful lot on them to go out and referee their first game without anybody on the sideline helping them.

“I know through Dublin GAA what happens is when they're doing the courses they have a day out in a certain venue where you'll bring numerous referees and you'll have their referee coordinator with them.

“You'll let them get in and referee for 10 minutes and then come back out and give them feedback and send another referee in and it's getting them slowly better.

“Because then you have someone to rely on when you come off to get that feedback. Then you get more of an understanding about how to referee the game.”

Many GAA clubs around operate ‘silent sidelines’ where the practice of mentors and parents shouting instructions at children during matches is discouraged in order to not just create a more fun environment to play in, but also enable the young players to better develop their own communication and decision-making skills.

Derry GAA have become the first county to make the ‘Silent Sideline’ compulsory for all Go-Games matches and they hope to then expand it to older age-groups in the coming years.

Gleeson believes making a ‘Silent Sideline’ compulsory for all Go-Games matches nationwide would go a long way to encouraging a culture of respect for referees.

“It's brilliant,” says Gleeson of the ‘Silent Sideline’ approach.

“It helps the referee focus more on the game and on the rules and focus more on teaching the players the right techniques rather than the wrong techniques.

“The club I work for is Scoil Ui Chonaill down in Clontarf, that's the next thing we're going to do, silent sidelines, because it has to happen.

“Like, you have parents roaring and screaming from the sidelines but they don't know the rules so the referee could be 100% right and the parents could be 100% wrong but then the referee will think that he or she is not doing a good job and then everything goes all over the place.

“Definitely silent sidelines is something that the GAA overall should be looking into, rather than just in each and every club every so often putting it in place, every club should have it in place.

“We need to start encouraging respect for referees at a really young underage level and bring it forward like that. At the end of the day, why do people play our games? To have fun. If someone is screaming and shouting on the sidelines, are the kids having fun anymore? No.

"Every time I coach a course, I coach to coach kids through fun games because they're here to have fun, they're here to see their friends, they're learning a skill while they're here.

“It's the same for a referee, it's learning new skills, how to communicate with mentors and players, speaking in the right manner to certain people, and yeah, you're right, it needs to start at a very young age and to push up all the way through the ranks, from kids all the way up.”

Gleeson is doing his bit to bring through a new generation of referees by co-ordinating a Future Leaders programme in Dublin where Transition Year students will be trained to be referees.

He’s passionate about refereeing because he believes it’s a brilliant way to be involved in Gaelic games where the positives far outweigh the negatives.

“Ah yeah, it's brilliant,” he says. “I played at a fairly high level football and hurling with my own club but I knew I wasn't going to get to where I wanted.

“Then the referee co-ordinator came to me when I was 13 or 14, he gave me a course and it's just something I've never looked back on, it was the best opportunity I ever took.

“Last year I made the Liam MacCarthy hurling panel. It took me a long time to get there but I enjoyed every single step of it and I would encourage every single young person who wants to referee to follow in the footsteps of the referee co-ordinator in the club, to go to provincial, and obviously go to the national themselves.”