Targeting of referees of no service to hurling

The furore over Brian Cody’s criticism of Barry Kelly last weekend has shed some light on a little-discussed phenomenon in the GAA, the shadowy world of county-referee incompatibility, where it can be claimed without fear of contradiction that a certain county has issues with a certain official.

We’ll get back to that. What recent days haven’t done is shed much light on the Kilkenny manager’s personality. It can hardly be a surprise that a man who has managed more All-Ireland-winning teams than anyone else is so competitive he criticises anyone who isn’t on the same hymn sheet, surely.

What has disappointed people is the whiff of calculation about the criticism. The media obsession with snap quotes from players and managers at the final whistle is based on a belief that seconds after a game is decided, the participants may speak freely while the blood is up. But by outlining his issues with Kelly the morning after winning the All-Ireland replay, and three weeks after the game Kelly actually refereed, what was Cody trying to achieve?