Soccer and GAA need to get over their hang-up about video games

LAST Saturday I watched the senior football play-off game between Tipperary and Dublin. It was not a particularly great game, but it was much more interesting and exciting than any of the World Cup soccer matches. The Cork and Waterford Munster hurling final on Sunday also left the soccer in the shade.

The Leinster football final between Louth and Meath was infinitely more interesting and exciting than the World Cup final, but one could hardly be blamed for wondering if the referee of that game was not trying to make the soccer officials look good with his bizarre decision to allow a Meath ‘goal’ in injury time, therby denying the Wee County its first Leinster championshp in 53 years.

Some of the World Cup soccer games were marred by poor officiating, but it seemed as if the GAA was determined to rescue Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president, , from his own ineptitude. He had been ridiculing calls for the introduction of technology to prevent the kind of thing that happened to Ireland in the qualifying game with France last November.