AN Other with Conor Neville: The humble umpire can’t win

As a body of men, umpires have not often been praised for their dynamism and alertness, writes Conor Neville.

For years, they were renowned for their ability to fail to spot melees that occurred under their noses.

Indeed, such was their proficiency in this field, that one wondered whether they even watched the game at which they were officiating.

But maybe these old boys had a strange wisdom about them. Perhaps there was method in their blindness.

They were minimalists who stuck rigidly within the confines of their original role — adjudicating on whether the ball had gone between the posts. And even on that, they weren’t the final arbiter.

One of the more extreme examples of laissez faire umpiring occurred at the 2010 Leinster final, when the official decided not to let Martin Sludden know he was making a terrible mistake and dutifully raised the green flag when instructed to do so.

An interventionist umpire might have felt he had a duty to tell Sludden ‘for God sake man, don’t do this...’

Now, we’re filled with interventionists. Yesterday saw a prime piece of interventionist umpiring. Referee Eddie Kinsella was persuaded to send off Down’s Conall McGovern on the say so of his umpire.

The resultant debate was in many respects a vindication of the philosophy of the laissez faire umpire. Amid the outrage at a harsh sending off, some were minded to ask what qualifications this umpire had to make such a call. After all to become an umpire, one must fulfil one single criterion: one must be a friend of the referee.

Should not the business of sending players off reside in the hands of someone who has received requisite training?

The old boys knew their limitations. They were there to raise the white and the green flag and wave the ball wide where necessary. They didn’t go around with the idea they were some kind of back-up referee, policing things on the pitch he couldn’t see.

If we’re going to have interventionist umpires, maybe the answer is to create some kind of umpire training college, an umpiring school of excellence, if you will. A temple of learning where umpires of tomorrow can acquire the tricks of the trade and keep abreast of the latest in umpiring best practice, whether it be taking up the correct position when a shot is struck or... the other things umpires have to do.

In the modern age, umpires have been spared thanks to economic constraints. HawkEye isn’t yet in place in every ground (give it a decade and we’ll see). We’ll have umpires to kick around for a while.

TV Watch: Lineouts, sideline cuts, all the same...

In Cork’s angst-ridden video analysis sessions over the next week, they can at least take solace from the fact that they went toe to toe with Waterford in one category.

As RTÉ informed us after the game, both teams played out an unsurprising 0-0 draw in the area of ‘lineouts won’, and not for the first time either, we’d wager.

The battle at lineout time was apparently a subplot during the game, though we must confess it was one we hadn’t considered while the match was ongoing.

We’re open to correction on this but we didn’t notice any lineouts in any of the hurling or indeed Gaelic football matches across the weekend.

The unfortunate ‘lineouts won’ graphic that appeared at the end of the Cork-Waterford game will give more ammunition to the class warriors who believe this really is, as the ad claimed, Rugby Country.

Meanwhile, Colm O’Rourke offended liberal opinion by expressing distaste for Eoin Bradley’s morally questionable habit of playing soccer during the winter months.

Nonetheless, he rates Bradley and openly doubted whether Brendan Rogers would be able to hold him. This is a reasonable concern. Although given that Rogers plays for Derry, one would also have to question the desire to keep him scoreless.

Mulcahy still a doubting Tomas on Galway

Back in the 1990s, when pundits were asked at the start of the year to predict the All-Ireland winners, it was rather in vogue to plump for Galway. It was plausible enough to sound intelligent, but left-field enough to sound interesting.

This was in spite of the fact Galway only won two ‘proper’ championship matches in the whole decade, the 1990 semi-final against Offaly and the 1993 semi-final against Tipp.

Galway’s odd championship programme contributed to this. They only ever met the Leinster or Munster champions and had to wait until August for their first match.

When Joanne Cantwell asked Tomas Mulcahy if the demolition of Dublin meant Galway were All-Ireland contenders, he replied with a surprisingly definite ‘No’.

Not even contenders? Not only was their forward line in scintillating form but the half-back line, with Iarla Tannian at its heart, had an indomitable feel. But Mulcahy was probably right asserting there was little enthusiasm in Galway for this team. The Galway crowd has a name for being fickle, possibly a by-product of being a dual county. It may take more than Saturday for people to trust Galway again.

When a surprise isn’t one

One can argue over just how big a scalp Offaly are these days.

But for a county with Laois’s modern history, coming from as far off as they’ve come, beating Offaly unquestionably counts as a scalp. It is crossing a psychological threshold.

There was euphoria in the Midlands Radio 103 commentary box as the game drew to a close. To absent minded traditionalists, glancing at the scoreline may prompt a double take.

But in truth the result hardly counts as a surprise. You could argue that both teams have put in the groundwork to get to this point. It was coming.

It is another landmark in the decline of Offaly as a GAA county. It’s difficult to credit that Offaly were contenders for the double a few decades ago.

In 1981, only the small matter of Kerry stood between them and history. In 2015, they look back on a decade where their footballers have failed to win a Leinster championship match and their hurlers are alsorans, and forgettable ones at that.

And fair play, Cheddar Plunkett found the time to advertise the Laois long puck in his post-match interview.