Review will stop teams bending rules, says Bannon

TOP referee John Bannon from Longford believes the upcoming review of playing rules will have a significant influence on the control of games in the future.

The review, to be carried out by the Rules Book Task Force, whose major recommendations on disciplinary procedures will be debated at next week's Congress, will be confined to rules which relate to matters of discipline.

"This is going to be very important going forward, particularly for football - because most of the problem areas are to do with football, the rules and the playing of the game," he said.

"A lot of the rules are outdated and teams have been able to come up with ways and means of bending them, of getting around them."

Bannon is optimistic about the outcome of the review, believing it will provide new definitions about how players are sent off.

"That is a whole grey area for referees," he added.

More immediately he welcomes the proposals contained in the interim report of the Task Force, which relate specifically to where clarification is sought from referees. Basically, what's recommended is where a referee issues a yellow card to a player, his decision on review would not be changed if he is satisfied it was the right decision.

Alternatively, he could inform the investigation committee that after looking at the incident on television he would agree that sterner action should be taken.

"Once you can use video evidence to clear a player, you should be able to use it to (further) penalise a player. In principle I don't have a problem with that," said Bannon.

His only reservation is that different criteria would apply in the case of games which are not covered on television (or where only one camera is in use) and club games.

He made the interesting observation - as a casual observer - that rugby referees appear to take the "easy option" of sending players to the sin bin - and that red cards are a rarity.

Similarly, he would be concerned that GAA referees might be disinclined to "make the hard call", knowing that a player could be (properly) punished on review of his misdemeanour at committee level.

"Referees are human and, human nature being what it is, if you are there in front of 60,000 people, you might feel you could get away with a yellow card. On the other hand, incidents are not always 100% clear cut."

Bannon himself was involved in one of the most controversial incidents last year, when he refereed the Meath-Dublin championship game and came in for widespread criticism for not red-carding a Dublin player who hit his opponent at the throw-in.

While he was reluctant to elaborate on the incident, he admitted that it looked a lot different on television from a camera angle behind the goal, compared to what he had fleetingly seen with the naked eye.

* A strong campaigner for the establishment of a specialist refereeing section in Croke Park, Bannon had a motion passed at the Longford convention for Congress which has been referred to Central Council for consideration.