The weekend was a nightmare for referees in one respect. Speaking in 2021, now retired Carlow inter-county referee Paud O’Dwyer summed up what match officials don’t want after they have taken charge of a fixture.
“A referee wants to go out and do a match fairly – nail it as best you can and stay off the back pages and The Sunday Game.”
The three Division 1A hurling fixtures this weekend catapulted refereeing decisions into the spotlight with eight red cards shown.
Dublin referee Seán Stack and Galway’s Liam Gordon between them issued seven red cards on Sunday and the night before, James Owens from Wexford sent off one player, Conor Cooney, for a second yellow card amid criticism that the first infraction, a head-high challenge on Limerick’s Mike Casey, in fact merited a red.
After their match against Cork in Ennis, Clare manager Brian Lohan was critical of what he felt was an instruction to referees to apply the rules more severely, or at least differently to how they had been applied during the season to date.
“But it looks like the game was refereed completely differently to how the games have been refereed so far this year. A little bit of notice is, I think, what we deserve.”
He was referring to an advisory from Croke Park to match officials not so much to ‘tighten up’ on the enforcement of the rules on head-high tackles but to apply them.
Clare’s Peter Duggan was red carded for catching the head of Brion Saunderson in challenging the Cork goalkeeper.
This had followed a couple of weeks of inconsistent application of the rule. In Limerick a week earlier, attention had been focused on an incident in which Clare’s Tony Kelly caught Adam English on the head while trying to dispossess him. Referee Thomas Walsh issued a yellow card to Kelly but had played on when Casey caught Jack O’Neill on the head when challenging for a ball.
There had been other instances the same weekend. In Walsh Park, Dublin’s Cian O’Sullivan was red carded for a shoulder-to-head contact on Waterford’s Mark Fitzgerald. Kilkenny’s Cian Kenny, however, wasn’t for a similar incident with Cork’s Ciarán Joyce.
In the light of all this inconsistency, referees were asked last week to enforce the rules, especially with regard to head-high contacts. Yet as far back as January, the GAA Central Council had issued guidelines on head-high tackles, emphasising choke holds and head contact.
Relevant red card infractions are: 5.16 To strike or to attempt to strike an opponent with arm, elbow, hand or knee with minimal force; 5.17 To strike or attempt to strike an opponent with a hurley, with minimal force; 5.25 To strike or attempt to strike with arm, elbow, hand or knee either with force or causing injury; 5.27 To strike an opponent with a hurley, either with force or causing injury; 5.28 To attempt to strike an opponent with a hurley, with force.
The preponderance of the weekend’s sendings-off were for head shots.
There was widespread sympathy for referees afterwards. In Kilkenny, the old spectre was conjured up of the faceless bureaucrats telling officials to crack down.
“Officials coming hard on the refs because they’re not giving red cards and yellow cards is not good enough in my opinion,” said Kilkenny manager Derek Lyng.
“It’s not fair on the referees first of all. They’re trying to do their job to the best of their own ability and they’re seeing what’s in front of them. If there is a deserved red card, absolutely but I didn’t see a red card today.”
He was speaking in frustration and acknowledged that he hadn’t had an opportunity to watch back the incidents, which may change his mind.
The idea that referees are being leaned on is misplaced. There should be pressure if rules aren’t being enforced and that is what the regular meetings of match officials attempt to address.
There is anxiety among administrators that somebody will be badly injured given the abandon with which the head is targeted – not necessarily in a determinedly malicious fashion but in the lack of boundaries players appear to feel when using their hurls and shoulders.
Rugby has attempted to eradicate that by making head challenges fouls of strict liability – you can’t argue that you didn’t mean it or the clash was accidental. Instead, players must discipline themselves to avoid such incidents.
Within Gaelic games, and hurling in particular, there is a sense that this has yet to be absorbed. Players burst out of gyms and training sessions at the start of the league ready to do damage – not necessarily out of malevolence but a desire to make physical superiority count.
That’s the environment referees are trying to control.
There were some interesting comments in this respect at the weekend. Limerick manager John Kiely made the point that players must be mindful of each other.
“The players are the ones that have the duty of care on the pitch, no matter what team you’re playing for. Fellas get it wrong from time to time, not intentionally – their timing is sometimes off a little bit, especially when you have players coming back after being off, who haven’t played in a few weeks.
“You come into a game that’s full blooded and moving very fast and it can be very difficult to get your timing right.”
A day later Tipperary manager Liam Cahill spoke on the same issue, including the difficulty of controlling a tightly wound coil when it is released.
“You’re dead right in saying that the high-head challenge is there. It is a dangerous challenge and it has to be stamped out. I absolutely agree with that 100 per cent.
“But the ferocity that’s there now at intercounty level with the way these guys are conditioned and the way they commit to the tackle, it’s very difficult on a referee sometimes to be able to make that decision there and then. But the rule is there, if it’s head-high, it’s dangerous and decisions have to be made. There is a lot of pressure on these referees in the current environment.
“As I said, it’s not an easy place to be, in the middle, when these decisions have to be made.”
He was also asked about players’ duty of care to each other.
“I saw John Kiely’s interview after the match [on Saturday]. It’s on all our players. Absolutely, we want them committed to the tackle and committed to everything that has to be the ferocity of intercounty, but these are amateur players and all of them have to get up either for college or work in the morning.
“That’s something I suppose that as players and as management we have to be aware of. We want the wholehearted commitment of players, but not at the expense of serious injury to anybody.”
Everyone needs to get on the same page – quickly.
