Brian Gavin: James Owens in pole position for hurling final and that points to worrying trend

The number of times HawkEye was used during Cork's victory over Offaly was borderline ridiculous. Seán Stack may need to have a word with his umpires

Most people would prefer James Owens to referee like he did in the Munster SHC round robin game between Cork and Limerick. That was one of his best ever performances. Pic: ©INPHO/Tom O'Hanlon

After the Munster final, the majority of the hurling fraternity questioned the lack of flow to the game. I was one of them and had James Owens not blown for six or seven soft frees it might have been considered a decent outing and put him in a good place for the All-Ireland final.

He was quickly back in the saddle in Thurles on Saturday and to be honest it was a surprise that he was appointed for the Clare-Dublin game. It told me two things – number one, how he took charge of the game in Cork at the start of the month is how Croke Park want the game to be officiated, which is slightly worrying, and two, that he will be the man of the middle on July 19 in what is his last year.

I wouldn’t begrudge him that but most people would prefer if he administers the rules like he did in the group game between Cork and Limerick, which was the best ever performance I have seen him put in.

We had an unsavoury incident at the end of the game on Saturday when Brendan Kenny caught David Reidy with a shoulder to the head. We are seeing more of these tackles and they can’t be tolerated. If you don’t meet your opponent on the shoulder with your own, you’re taking a massive gamble and almost making the referee’s mind up for him.

There was no due care shown by Kenny and he was dangerous in his foul to Reidy and a red card was rightly shown. Players are so strong now and there might be a feeling that they are never more conditioned to absorb such fouls but the impact is fierce. Reidy wasn’t in a place to protect himself and thankfully he is on the mend.

Brian Lohan spoke about referees having to do better around head-high tackles. I would say the majority of them have been diligent around it apart from a couple of incidents.

With their All-Ireland semi-final in mind, Clare will need to look at their own tackling techniques as they gave away some needless frees in the first half against Dublin. There was also a blatant pull of a jersey missed on Dublin’s Brian Hayes at a time of the game when it was still competitive.

In Thurles on Sunday, Seán Stack had a handy day at the office but his umpires let him down calling on HawkEye so regularly. Nobody minds the technology being called for two or three times, but it was happening so often that it was showing them up as well as the system in the stadium.

The whole thing was borderline ridiculous. The delays are so long in Thurles and for a game attended by roughly 40,000 people bringing in hundreds of thousands of euro in gate receipts it’s just not good enough.

Stack is likely facing an awkward conversation or two with umpires because if he wants to referee an All-Ireland final his team will have to improve and possibly be changed. For his part, he was right with his decisions.

The talking point football-wise on Sunday came in Croke Park where Martin McNally sent four players to the sin-bin for the row that broke out at the end of normal time.

Michael Murphy, Jason McGee, Niall Scully and Theo Clancy were all shown black cards before the start of extra-time and that contributing to a melee punishment really is one of the unheralded changes to the game brought in by the Football Review Committee.

Referees are learning from incidents earlier in the championship and are beginning to get things right as we saw in the Derry-Meath game in Celtic Park the week before. It would be great to see it incorporated into hurling too. No red cards, yes, but accepting no nonsense either.

I have great admiration for Paul Faloon and his way of refereeing but he overdid it in Castlebar on Saturday. James Conlon was clearly fouled but the free wasn’t given to the Meath forward and it led to an entanglement between Jack Coyne and Ronan Jones, and Jones was deemed to have struck the Mayo man. It changed the game but if Faloon had whistled the blatant free in the first place, there would have been no red card for Jones.