Who is the best GAA referee of all time?

THEY only remember your mistakes.

Any referee will tell you. But most observers still have a list of top officials in Gaelic football and hurling that they can call to mind.

Brendan Larkin of the Irish Examiner, for instance, rates Cork County Board secretary Frank Murphy highly as a referee.

“Paddy Cronin of the Barrs was a very good referee,” says Larkin. “So was Frank, though people are probably more familiar with him now as an administrator. I’d certainly put Frank up there in the top rank of refs.

“John Moloney of Bansha was a very good referee as well. People in Cork mightn’t remember him too fondly after the controversies in the 1976 Munster football final, of course, but there’s no denying his quality.”

Larkin’s opinions are backed by one of the legends of the game. Let Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh of RTÉ explain.

“John Doyle of Tipperary said the best referee around was Frank Murphy of Cork.

“‘I’d have him every day,’ said Doyle to me one time, ‘Even if we were playing Cork. You knew where you stood, you knew what he’d blow for and what he wouldn’t — and you knew what would happen if you went beyond that mark.’”

Going back through the years, plenty of top-level players doubled up as referees even as they were still playing. Mickey Kearins of Sligo was a well-respected referee, as were former GAA President Con Murphy of Cork, and Peter McDermott of Meath.

McDermott — the famous ‘man with the cap’ — remains the only player to referee All-Ireland finals before and after winning a medal on the field of play with Meath in 1949.

Con Murphy, the recently deceased former President of the GAA, handled seven Cork county finals as well as NHL, Munster Championship finals and the All Ireland hurling finals of 1948 and 1950.

Murphy’s bravery in the full back line for Cork was replicated by a no-nonsense approach with a whistle: Tipperary hurler John Doyle said that the Cork man was the only referee to have ever sent him off.

Commanding respect is always a big test for a referee. As Ó Muircheartaigh points out, that’s harder for some than for others.

“Some referees are accepted,” he says. “Others, no matter what they do, they’re not accepted. I always thought Simon Deignan of Cavan was a great referee, partly because he had great authority.

“He was also very dramatic when he was in charge of a game. If there was a foul he’d come flying over and stretch down on one knee, pointing up the field the way the free was going — there was never any questioning that decision!”

Times have changed, and with those changes come new referees.

“More recently, Pat McEneaney of Monaghan is a very good ref,” says Larkin. “John Bannon of Longford is very good. So is Dickie Murphy of Wexford.”

Murphy, well known for handling games with a smile, outlines the requirements for officiating at the top level.

“People skills, or handling players, is a huge help for a referee,” says the Wexford man. “The obvious advantages are knowing the rules and being fit, but a referee who can use common sense in the heat of battle is a big help.

“For myself, when I was starting out Terence Murray of Limerick was the referee who handled a lot of the big games at the time. Of course, it was a different time, you’d only have All-Ireland semi-finals or finals on the television, so you didn’t get much of a chance to see good referees in action, but I always thought Terence was a very good ref.

“What was impressive was that he had a good way about him — he could let the game flow, he dealt with the players. I suppose that that was something that influenced me then, in the way that I refereed games.’’

Murphy points out that not only have the games become faster, the scrutiny of referees has increased hugely with television coverage of practically all games.

“Today the last thing you want is to have anyone notice you,” he says. “The big problem for many referees is that they’re the centre of attention after the game. Times have changed, and going back the years you wouldn’t see games on screen apart from All-Ireland finals and semi-finals, but now everyone can see games all the time — on TG4, Setanta, on RTÉ — so everyone can see how a referee is doing.

“That puts pressure on, no doubt about it, and refereeing is more difficult as a result. But you have to remember always that the game is about the players, after all, not the referee.”

On balance Ó Muircheartaigh inclines towards Deignan as the GAA’s finest ever ref and not just because of his showmanship. The Cavan man’s standing in the game can be gauged from the fact that potential conflicts of interest were never remarked upon.

“Simon Deignan was very good, even though Derry people wouldn’t forget the penalty he gave for Dublin against them in the football final of 1958,” says Ó Muircheartaigh. “A lot was made of that at the time because he was living and working in Dublin. That was maybe when people started asking for neutral referees.

“But Deignan won an Ulster medal with Cavan one Sunday in the forties, and the next Sunday he refereed the Munster football final. It was quite possible that the winners would have played Cavan later in the season, but nobody remarked on it.

“To add to that, Deignan would have been stationed in a barracks in Tralee at the time — the Emergency was on at that stage — and he was playing for the John Mitchels club. Three of their players played for Kerry that day — but Cork didn’t object, and nobody would have thought of objecting.”

Deignan in fact refereed the Munster final in 1947 — and starred for Cavan against Munster champions Kerry later that year when the two sides met in the All-Ireland final, played in the Polo Grounds in New York.

And yet . . . the Cavan man handled the 1950 All-Ireland football final three years after picking up that Celtic cross, and years later Patsy McCoy, of beaten finalists Louth, reported a conversation he’d had with Mick Mulderrig of Mayo.

Mulderrig said Deignan had told him that Mayo were the luckiest team ever to win an All-Ireland, adding that Mick Flanagan had over-run the ball for the crucial goal in the 1950 final, but that when Deignan reached for his whistle it was jammed between his togs and his jersey — and Mayo won the All-Ireland.

Typical. As we said, they only remember the mistakes.

Best referee: Simon Deignan (Cavan).