This year’s All-Ireland senior hurling final referee Colm Lyons feels the media needs to improve on how it covers inter-county referees’ performances.

Speaking ahead of the Respect the Referee Day which takes place this weekend, the Cork official reckons that a mindset shift is needed amongst supporters, players and all of those involved in Gaelic games.

"We have mainstream media, we have our media in the paper and social media. We also have our spectators who are also involved in social media who at times can put up negative tweets and make Facebook comments and that's something that maybe isn't monitored. There's a lot of trolling that goes on about referees," he is quoted saying by Sky Sports GAA.

"The GPA had a report recently, Tom Parsons spoke about the impact of abuse on high profile players in terms of Division 1 games. That study hasn't been done on referees. I've no doubt the figures would be actually higher for referees who have gotten abuse.

"I'd like to emphasise the positive feeling about refereeing. If you talk to referees, they enjoy refereeing but I do think there has to be an onus on journalists to be less critical thinking about viewing certain high profile ex-players, managers, turning the narrative around from 'oh, the referee got it wrong' to putting the onus on the player putting himself in a position to get a red card. That's what I would like, our mainstream media journalism would step up a little bit and be more investigative and nail the perpetrators rather than blaming the referees."

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