Grace Walsh: Referees easy scapegoat for team's defeat

Ahead of this weekend's 'Respect the Ref’ campaign, Kilkenny camogie star Grace Walsh concedes that GAA officials are sometimes the easiest scapegoat when a team fails to win.

Last week GAA president Larry McCarthy said that the recent high-profile incidents regarding the abuse, physical and verbal, of officials "have undoubtedly cast a shadow over the entire association".

Speaking at the launch of the Planet Games in Kenya next month, Walsh says that while she has never witnessed anything remotely close to physical abuse of a referee on the camogie pitch, verbal abuse still needs to be stamped out.

"Referees are there to do their best," she said. "They love the sport as much as we do and are as passionate about it. They are trying to make the right calls. Sometimes they don’t make the right calls, but they are only human. You have to learn to bite your tongue as a player sometimes.

"I’ll hold my hand up and say I haven’t done that all the time. As you get a bit older, you learn to do that."

Among the frustrations within the game over the years has been both the rules governing the game, and indeed the application of them.

In 2019, 70% of the 243 inter-county players surveyed by the Women’s Gaelic Players Association (WGPA) agreed that rules on physical contact 'very much' need to change, with a sense expressed that the game was not keeping up with developments in player conditioning and technical ability.

Adrian O'Sullivan recently stepped away from his role as Dublin senior camogie manager, citing his frustration over the application of rules as a contributing factor.

The Tullaroan woman however is slow to point the finger at officials, stating that the result can skew perceptions around decision making.

"In our championship,