Former Offaly star Kelly backs video ref call

FORMER Offaly hurling star Joachim Kelly has backed the call for video referees to be introduced as the debate continues to rage about the late penalty decision awarded to Kilkenny in Sunday’s All-Ireland final.

Kelly is quick to praise Diarmuid Kirwan but reckons there is too much pressure on referees and that technology should be used to help them.

Tipperary chairman Barry O’Brien argued the time had come for video referees to be employed following Kirwan’s award of the controversial penalty, which was crashed to the net by Henry Shefflin to give Kilkenny the lead in the 63rd minute.

Most pundits argued that any foul on Richie Power had taken place outside of the area, and that the Kilkenny full-forward had taken at least six steps by the time he reached the large parallelogram.

Kelly himself saw All-Ireland glory snatched from the grasp of his Offaly camogie team in last year’s junior decider, when replays suggested that Shonagh Enright’s injury time goal for Clare might not have been legal.

“I am always campaigning for that” said Kelly, at yesterday’s press conference in Croke Park ahead of Sunday’s All-Ireland senior and junior camogie finals.

“They do it in the rugby; they stop play and roll it back and if you have to spend 10 seconds or 15 seconds with a panel of judges up in the box.

“There’s more stewards and people around this stadium telling you what to do and what not to do. I would have somebody up there on a monitor like they have in the rugby because these teams are training since last November, two, three, four nights a week, weights, gym and everything and it comes down to an incident that could lose you an All-Ireland.

“Maybe if they had video coverage of our goal last year where it was thrown in, we would have won.

“People are saying that it slows up the game but there’s no one going to go home. Everyone is going to wait and they’ll kick-start it again. I think it has to come. There’s too much left to one man on the field, he has too much to do.”

Meanwhile, the former All-Ireland winner hailed Sunday’s decider as the best final he had ever witnessed, in terms of sustained intensity and the quality of the scoring.

And while he knows that Kilkenny will be hard to beat next year, he has a feeling Tipp’s young guns will be back to test them in 12 months time, going so far as to predict the unlikeliest of results.

“That was the best All-Ireland final I’ve seen in my time. For the intensity from start to finish, everyone got stuck in, the speed of the hurling, the skill and on a damp day. Some of the scoring was fantastic, Lar Corbett got four great points.

“Kilkenny now are going for five-in-a-row, another new record. I think Tipperary will have something to say about it next year.”