Women running the line, if not the world

Eimear Ryan - blowing the whistle on the week’s sport.

I’ll never forget the middle-aged hurling fan behind me on the terraces in the autumn of 2014, yelling at a referee who had made a few polarising calls: “He couldn’t ref a camogie match!”

It sticks in my mind partly because the spectator took a shine to the phrase, and repeated it several times, while I took deep breaths and tried not to strangle him with a headband. (It was, in fairness, probably one of the more family-friendly lines he threw in the ref’s direction that day.)