John Fogarty: Help referees and you help the game

50 AND OUT: Maurice Deegan officiating the Munster SFC semi-final between Tipp and Limerick in 2020. Deegan had to step away from refereeing after reaching the age limit of 50 last year. Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

For all his impassioned oratory about the underage grades at Congress on Saturday, one of, if not the most noteworthy statements by Cork GAA chief executive Kevin O’Donovan was his claim that every Division 2 football team that weekend were effectively playing a championship game.

O’Donovan was making the point in relation to the demands being placed on Sigerson and Fitzgibbon Cup players' time as they toggled between two masters.

As Seán Powter highlighted after Cork’s win over Kildare earlier this month, six of their defenders were serving both college and county commitments.

John Cleary can’t afford to go without them when a Sam Maguire Cup position is up for grabs and neither can Colm O’Rourke, whose Meath team are just one of three teams in the division who have picked up more than two points after three rounds.

Division 2, everyone has known for some time, is where it’s at right now. A finish in the top half of the table will put a team in a good position to qualify for the top 16 of the championship but there’s no guarantee. Only those who secure the top six spots in Division 1 are secure as Westmeath and one of Leitrim, London, New York, and Sligo are taking two places and it is possible if not probable the eight provincial finalists could come from further down the leagues.

Given so much is on the line as O’Donovan rightly points out, more of the leading referees should be assigned to the Division 2 games. Division 1 can provide a good schooling for quickly developing match officials but given what’s at stake, the second highest octet requires the best around.

Seamus Mulhare is a blossoming referee but Sunday wasn’t one of his best days. 

“If those type of things are going to go on to the championship, I wouldn’t think that that referee will get many games up in the North anyway, if you are going to get sendings off like that, and both of them were fierce harsh altogether,” said Cleary, who continued: “Every year, maybe, at the start of the league, there are soft cards and soft sending offs, and that was it today.” 

That annual and accurate bugbear could be addressed if there weren’t so many referees trying to make the championship cut themselves, where being wedded to the rulebook is considered the wisest policy. The GAA’s very own fake it ‘til you make it, if you will.

If, as O’Donovan says, Division 2 is de facto championship then there should be no need for a championship panel of referees but a squad picked at the start of the season or leave the call sheet open-ended. Safe in the knowledge they won’t lose out, perhaps then younger referees wouldn’t be so determined to flash cards for fouls they know won’t translate to the field from Easter Sunday.

It wasn’t just in Cork where eyebrows were raised about the officiating. There was a rough double-hop call against Clare in Ennis. Colm Cooper had enough reason on Twitter to claim on Sunday that “the standard of refereeing in Gaelic Football at the moment is very worrying.” And to be fair on the match officials and to ensure everything looks as much as is above board, none from counties participating in Division 2 should take charge of those involving other teams in the division.

On the same weekend that new rules were introduced to enshrine respect for referees and fortify the disciplinary system, bad calls serve as a reminder that match officials, just like players, are human and need further support. Not that they should be bankrolled to the extent the Gaelic Players Association are but their development and sustainability has been grossly underfunded.

Assistance may come by way of video technology as a passed motion from Leitrim club Seán O’Heslin’s has seen a working group set up to explore how replays etc may assist referees without upsetting the flow of a game.

Notwithstanding the GAA’s backing of HawkEye, they have been conservative in this area so the use of a big screen or replay or, God forbid, it’s left to somebody else in a television booth is a long shot.

Mulhare’s fellow Laois man Maurice Deegan will be part of that committee having had to step away from the inter-county game due to reaching the age limit last year but shouldn’t he still be officiating?

Speaking to this newspaper last week, Professor Niall Moyna said there was no physiological reason why match officials over 50 shouldn’t continue. He suggested the cap was a means of incentivising young referees that the seasoned men weren’t getting all the big appointments.

That is also Croke Park’s belief and yet we can’t recall the last 50-year-old to be appointed for an All-Ireland final, while five different men have taken charge of the last five football deciders.

Retaining experience — just another simple way of helping the refs and in turn the game.

What price for Louth’s ‘golden’ stadium?

On February 9, GAA president Larry McCarthy was at the launch of Louth GAA’s plans to raise €1.5m from selling seats at their new stadium outside Dundalk. Approximately three-quarters of the building costs is coming from the €14.8m raised by the board via the Immigration Investment Programme (IIP).

“They (Louth) came with a good project and we backed it,” McCarthy told The Argus newspaper. “They’ve done phenomenal work in terms of getting money from the IIP programme, they’re the county that has done best out of it so far, and fair dues. We’ll support any good stadium projects and this is a very, very good stadium project.”

Five days later and with breakneck speed acting Justice Minister Simon Harris confirmed he had received permission from the Government to shut down the IIP scheme the following day. It is believed concerns had been raised about possible fraudulent activity in the “cash for visas” process. Harris said: “We have also taken on board a number of reports and findings from international bodies such as the EU Commission, Council of Europe and OECD on similar investment programmes.”

Louth did the best out of it and got in while the going was good. But a question mark hangs over the programme as the legality of some funds coming from China where many of the IIP participants originate could not be verified.

Burns presidency will carry big expectations

With 158 votes, Jarlath Burns recorded the best first preferences return in a GAA presidential race since Aogán Farrell nine years ago.

Bearing in mind that the size of Congress has diminished by over 10% since then following a rationalisation of delegation sizes, Burns’ mandate is even more impressive, 57% of the total valid poll compared to Farrell’s 54.6% and before him Christy Cooney’s 55.7% 15 years ago.

Of course, it was at the second time of asking whereas the previous three presidents including Farrell won first time out. Nevertheless, it was a resounding success, especially in the face of a major last-ditch campaign from the Pat Teehan camp.

Becoming the first GAA president from the six counties since Peter Quinn who left office in 1994 is a significance Burns is all too aware of and also interesting is the maverick-like qualities he shares with the Fermanagh man.

Like Joe McDonagh and Nickey Brennan before him, he enters the office in 2024 with a profile because of his playing days, which he has bolstered with a fine punditry career since his last game for Armagh 24 years ago. He can harness being so familiar to the general public, although it is likely to make him more of a target too.

Not only is Burns polished but he has substance and much like his mentor, former GAA director general Páraic Duffy who he warmly embraced in Silverbridge at his homecoming on Saturday night, he will provide plenty of policy.

“I’m going to be clear on this — I do not want a legacy,” he said on Friday.

“Three years’ in an organisation like the GAA… forget about a legacy.”

The idea of seeking one may have exercised Burns more had he succeeded Duffy, a role he was linked to in 2018. Still, it’s difficult to disassociate him from one when expectations are so high. A quiet 12 months before taking the pin could be just the tonic.

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