Keith Duggan/Sideline Cut: Much like Peig Sayers, CJH, Charles Mitchell, the plain ham sandwich, Miley, the Safe Cross Code song, much like the Wild Geese and the Lane collection and Shane McGowan, we in this country will not recognise the GAA referee as a national treasure until he has gone.
It is time to say it out. The GAA referee is an endangered species. Very soon, he is going to feature in one of David Attenborough's nature documentaries as one of Ireland's most rare and callously treated living creatures.
We take the humble referee for granted and it is time to call a halt. It is time to organise a function in Barry's hotel, to persuade Bono to don the shades and to dispense hugs and funky awards and to declare all GAA referees great and loveable and - for this part is often overlooked - cool.
All referees are exceptional. Mad, of course, but exceptional. Take Pat McEnaney. This is a man who voluntarily puts himself at the mercy of 30,000 highly emotional and frustrated neighbours from feuding Ulster counties and, aided only by a simple whistle and coloured cards, manages to depart that evening without leaving a full-scale riot behind him.
You don't think that takes some kind of special diplomacy and human relationship skills? You think that shit goes unnoticed by the suits over in Brussels who are always on the lookout for a budding peace-broker? Do not kid yourself. If McEnaney so chose, he could be whizzing across the continent with Chuck McCreevy on the Lear jet, downing the Bolly and laughing at the memory of his 30-pence-per-mile-expenses days. McEnaney could have it have it all but like the rest of his brethren, he is devoted, see.
As with the priesthood and line-dancing, the call to become a GAA referee is heard only by a select number. In school, it is pretty easy to identify which boy is going to become the accountant, the garda, the publican and the armed robber but it is a damn sight harder to pinpoint the fledgling referee.
Referees are not born with the look - that kind of vague, stoned grin common to all our top officials is something developed through years of having their manhood, parentage, mental wellbeing, honesty, looks and intelligence impugned on a weekly basis. The beloved car-clamper will shortly begin to sport a similar kind of smile, a defence mechanism against a hostile world.
Much as you could never have guessed that the lad who lived across the road would turn out to become a pop star, neither could you guess at the one who ended up as a referee.
In this job, you get the chance to observe the referee in his playground, so to speak, standing on the fringes of the field where he will attempt to uphold law, order and an interpretation of the fair tackle.
He is generally a quiet fellow, the referee, content to sup tea in his modest little box room with its bench and two hangers - one for his shirt, one for his whistle. (The GAA is right in assuming that its referees would frown on changing-room luxuries like jacuzzis or heated towels, although legend has it that they do make available a personal hairdresser for Mick Curley.)
He might joke with his stewards and linesmen - the referee has an underrated line in black humour. But generally, he is happy to mull around the edges of the scene, getting himself right, thinking about the game and maybe indulging in a few warm-ups.
And let me tell you here and now there are few sights in life more genuinely poignant than that of a referee doing a calf-muscle stretch underneath the stand. There is a faith and innocence in the very gesture that would break your heart.
For what use is a well-conditioned calf to the GAA referee in today's world? Or even two?
For instance, tennis is not noted for the kind of punch-ups, cut heads, stitches, cursing, melees, handbags or fouling it is the responsibility of the GAA referee to stamp out. Yet, in tennis, to officiate a game played in a small space, they provide an umpire, a senior referee, about a dozen soon-to-be-riddled-with-permanent-backache people to judge whether the ball is in or out and that "cyclops" thing, which has the final say anyhow. There is a scorekeeper, a timekeeper, ball boys, ball girls, water carriers, the works.
As Ger Loughnane would say: Now. Consider our own bat and ball game, the fastest field game in the world. As well as keeping order, score, and time, there is this.
When, as will happen tomorrow in Croke Park, a defender rises to make a great catch, the sliotar will be dispatched from one end of the field to the other. How fast the ball travels doesn't matter: suffice to say if Diarmuid O'Sullivan is in the mood, it will travel about the same speed as a bloody Concorde.
Now the ball will land 80 or 90 yards away in about 0.5 of a second and if the GAA referee does not arrive about 0.5 of a second later, the general response is: "Ah, keep up with the play, ya b*****ks!"
We are truly a reasonable nation. The national relationship with the GAA referee is borderline psychotic.
All the frustrations and rejections and unfairness we experience in life we throw at the GAA referee from the anonymity of the stands. I was sitting beside this buck at a match once and as soon as the referee appeared, a good 15 minutes before throw-in, he began shouting and cursing at him, already angry and working himself into a true state. His companion protested that the game had yet to start and that the referee had yet to punish their team or make a mistake.
"No. But the b*****d effin' will," shouted my neighbour - and his mood did not brighten over the day.
Often at games, when play is halted for a bust-up or when sustained boos follow the referee as he scurries about the field, a man alone, it is tempting to wonder how officials from other games would fare.
Imagine Pierluigi Collina whistling Kilkenny versus Waterford, his full moon eyes falling on Dan the Man Shanahan or Peter Barry. Or how about English rugger referee Tony Spreadbury calling Armagh versus Tyrone.
"Okay, chaps. Quick ball, now. Don't encroach on the field of play, Big Joseph."
No. It wouldn't work. There are only very few among us who have what it takes to make it as a GAA referee. And the beauty about them is that, much like Clarke Kent and Peter Parker, they just melt back into society at large once they are separated from their uniform and whistle. They are ordinary men doing extraordinary things. They are martyrs to our cause and in years to come, I am convinced of it, their statues will adorn the great cities alongside O'Connell, Parnell and Emmet.
Perhaps they are enlightened enough to know that our appreciation of them can only be posthumous. Perhaps they know that we know not what we do.
