McGeeney: Gaelic becoming like Dancing on Ice

KILDARE boss Kieran McGeeney has slammed the inconsistent refereeing of Gaelic games and bemoaned the growing trend of coaching footballers to act and dive to win frees.

McGeeney believes the sport has become “a game of half-rules” and that some of the theatrics of players would be better served on the hit television series Dancing on Ice.

McGeeney’s comments came in the wake of Sunday’s victory over Westmeath, with the performance of Aidan Mangan under the spotlight.

The Kerry official awarded an early penalty to the Lakesiders following the most innocuous of challenges by Damien Hendy on Martin Flanagan, yet ignored a more obvious nudge when the roles were reversed later.

That was just an example of the type of inconsistency that bemused McGeeney, who also made reference to the 11 yellow cards dished out by Martin Sludden in Saturday night’s clash between Down and Armagh.

McGeeney said: “I give up. I just think the whole thing is ridiculous.

“It’s just impossible. You can’t say if you tackle ‘like this’ then you won’t get blown up. Daryl Flynn made a great tackle in one of the first games; a full-length tackle, flicked it off a fella’s toe, fell afterwards and got a yellow card.

“I watched the Down-Armagh game – (the number of) yellow cards and there wasn’t a hard tackle in the bloody game.

“People will read the newspapers and say ‘McGeeney is talking about referees again’ but everyone agrees with me. It’s a game of half-rules. I remember an Aussie Rules referee saying that to me and he’s right. One week it’s a free, one week it’s not.”

McGeeney wouldn’t criticise any coaches instructing their players on ways to win frees but insisted that he would never do so, even though he feels it is a common tactic. He also hailed hurlers for a different mentality when it came to playing.

“I can’t coach players to do that. I can’t tell them to dive to win free kicks. That’s the way Gaelic football is played now but I can’t coach it. You look at hurling and it’s basically the same rules but they’re a different set of players. They don’t like going down, they don’t like holding an arm to pull someone down (to win a free).

“You look at the amount of head high challenges there are supposed to be in Gaelic football and yet nobody ever gets hurt. You would think if you would hit someone across the throat that they wouldn’t get up.

“The amount of times it seemingly happens in Gaelic football but once you slow it down, you see it isn’t. It’s like Dancing On Ice. It’s just very difficult to coach a set system.

“It is difficult because you want to coach the game, you want to show how to tackle and stuff like that.

“The referees are trying to make it more fluid but it’s difficult when you don’t understand what the hell is going on.”