EDITORIAL: Sideline antics a major issue for GAA

Sideline antics are becoming a major problem for the GAA and it’s one that doesn’t have a quick fix.

Incidents of verbal or especially physical assault are getting lots of attention in the media at present which is helping to shine a light on the abhorrent behaviour.

There’s something in these altercations going on at games and all of us standing around, complicit in our silence.

But once an issue enters the country’s discourse in the column pages and news pages of national and local publications, suddenly we’re all striving to fix the problem.

It’s as though it being written about, gives us courage to talk about it, to stand up against it, and that is what we must do.

Anyone who attends a GAA match from underage up to senior level, needs to condemn this behaviour - without risking your own safety of course.

It can be easier said than done, not long ago, on this very page of The Nationalist, it was written that “this type of loutish behaviour is wrong” but the leader conceded that there might be no way to eradicate these incidents. Maybe there is a way...

Behavioural change does not always happen overnight. But the winds of change have begun to blow. The GAA will hold a national Respect the Referee Day across the weekend of October 22 and 23.

But how quickly will we see the benefits of such an initiative?

Because as we know, it’s not just the referees that are vulnerable to verbal and physical assaults.

Players and spectators can also get caught up in altercations. The perpetrators of such assaults, be they verbal or physical, need to be treated harshly.

The GAA field needs to be treated as though it is a public pavement, or the outside of a nightclub.

Report the matter to the gardaí, let them take statements, let them investigate it and let that be the deterrent for such appalling behaviour.

Let it be to court for these scoundrels who would commit physical or verbal assaults on a GAA field. It might be the only way to stamp out these antics.