Referee who was injured following U15 GAA game plans to return to action tonight

THE CLARE REFEREE who sustained injuries in an incident after a U15 Gaelic football game in Kilrush on Monday night is set to return to the pitch tonight.

Clare county board chairman Kieran Keating confirmed that referee John O’Connell “wants to get back on the horse” in the wake of the incident.

“He said he wants to go ahead and do that, so that’s good news at least,” Keating told RTÉ Morning Ireland.

Gardaí investigations “are ongoing” following the fracas in the aftermath of the game between Kilrush and Lissycasey, with the referee’s report of the incident expected to be submitted either this evening or on Thursday.

Keating said: “There was an altercation of some sort that shows the sort of immediate aftermath of it. That’s what we will be investigating and hopefully arriving at a finding. If there is an infraction, we’ll punish the culprits that we can identify.”

The minimum sanction laid out under Rule 7.2.c of the GAA rulebook states that any type of assault on a referee, a score umpire, line umpire or sideline official can be punished with a minimum of a 96 weeks suspension. This minimum sanction is automatically doubled for an underage game.

Keating added: “It’s just very disappointing in this day and age, when there’s been so much done to improve behaviour around the pitch. The FRC have brought in a number of new rules including with regard to interactions with the referee.

“It sounds like a step back to old times, you know, we thought we’d seen the end of these kind of things, so it’s disappointing. We can just deal with it and try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I know the message that we’ll send out is that we won’t tolerate it.”