Top Mayo referee covers most ground
DID we ever stop to think that our country's inter-county referees need to be as fit as the players?
In the recent All-Ireland football final between Mayo and Dublin we witnessed a fitness level reached by the players taking part as we never saw before. But that fitness level is now what is required by the players as on average they cover 9.80km in a game.
It is just slightly less in hurling, where the adverage ground covered by players is 9.64km per game.
However, inter-county referees are now covering similar distances as players throughout the course of championship matches, with maximum top speeds not far off either.
Data collected by using GPS units throughout the 2017 football and hurling championships was aimed at assisting and improving referee fitness programmes.
But among the findings it showed referees now covering just under 10km per game. Also, linesmen - often assumed to be standing still - are in fact covering close to 7km per game.
During the hurling and football championships, all 20 football referees and 14 national hurling referees were tracked using GPS units throughout the championship (28 games in hurling, 63 games in football) by STATSports, who have their UK base in Newry, for research carried out by the GAA in association with Aidan Brady at DCU.
The findings certainly surprised most followers of our two major national games.
In football, the maximum top speed of the referee was 28.3km/h; in hurling it was 26.7km/h, again not far off the maximum top speed of the player.
From a Mayo point of view, the most interested finding was that it was the county's top referee, Jerome Henry from Castlebar, who covered the most ground, 11.70km, in any of the 63 inter-county championship games this year.
This was in the All-Ireland Round 2A clash between Clare and Laois which was played in Portlaoise. When one thinks that the average ground covered by a player in a game is 9.80km, it is almost 2km less what Jerome Henry covered in this crucial game.
The Castlebar match official who is highly regarded in refereeing circles, is expected to reach the top and we are lilely to see him get an All-Ireland senior final booking in the future. But then again, he will have to wait until Mayo stop getting to the All-Ireland final!
In hurling the most ground covered, 11.2km, by a referee was by Paud O’Dwyer in the All-Ireland qualifier between Tipperary and Westmeath at Semple Stadium in Thurles.
Commenting on these findings, Barry Watters, senior sports scientist at STATSports, said: “Over the 70 minutes, players would be doing three or even four times the number of high intensity runs, but all in all, referees cover the same distance.
"We know how much work the players do to get in shape, and again the referees don’t often get the same credit. But the purpose here is to then base fitness tests and other markers at the start of the year to help decide are they at the fitness standard necessary to referee senior championship matches.”
What all of this really shows is the type of hard work the top referees have to put in Mayo very own to have the fitness levels required to take charge of big games. Jerome Henry is the top man in the country this year.