Stop video review policy, says former ref Collins

ANOTHER high-profile former referee has hit out at the GAA’s policy of requesting match officials to revisit controversial decisions made during games.

Paddy Collins is the author of two motions put forward by his club St Loman’s and adopted unanimously by the Westmeath board to be discussed at Congress in April, which if passed, will prevent a referee having to deal with an incident after a game.

Longford, at the proposal of another retired inter-county ref John Bannon, and his club Legan Sarsfields, also have a motion going before Congress on the same issue.

Bannon was asked to consider whether his call on showing John Miskella a yellow card in last August’s semi-final between Cork and Tyrone was the correct one.

Collins refereed four All-Irelands during a lengthy career and served as county secretary for 32 years. He was a selector when Westmeath won the Leinster SFC title under Páidí O Sé’s reign in 2004 and is back in that role again this year with Brendan Hackett.

“The practice whereby a referee is asked to referee a game on a Monday that he has already adjudicated on the previous day is wrong and it needs to be discontinued,” Collins says.

“There is no support for it among inter-county referees and there’s no support that I’m aware of for it amongst players either. The referee has an arduous task and it’s getting more difficult. When they’re finished a game, they expect that, that is the end of it.

“They ring a referee who may be teaching in the school, baling hay or roofing a house, and they ask him to look at an incident that happened in the previous day’s game. The subtext to that and it is a clear subtext, is that they would like him to look at the game and they would like him to concur with the judgment that they have already come to.”

He is not looking to dispense with the use of video evidence by disciplinary bodies, however.

“If my contention is right, there is no widespread support for this type of deferred adjudication in games amongst players or referees” Collins declared. “The only people that seem to want it are the officials. Our motion allows them, if they want to review an incident, to do just that but the referee will not be asked to look at it a second time. They referee will not be put in this invidious position again.”