Deegan in spotlight amid huge foul count at Celtic Park

NO-ONE likes to see a referee dominate the conversation after a game but it was impossible to skirt around the role played by Maurice Deegan during yesterday’s events in Celtic Park.

The county Laois official awarded 69 frees in the course of 73 or so minutes, a horrendously high figure, even in Gaelic football where the average hovers somewhere between the high-30s and mid-40s.

Deegan is no cub either.

The Stradbally man took charge of the 2008 All-Ireland final between Kerry and Tyrone but Croke Park like to keep a tight rein on discipline in the championship’s opening weeks and so it proved here.

“I would say that it was not a great spectacle but I don’t believe it was a dirty game,” said Armagh manager Paddy O’Rourke. “Both teams went out to play football and a lot of the tackling was fair.

“We didn’t need as many frees, but we don’t make the rules. We try and not foul. It is one of the things that we try to do out on the pitch; if we can limit the amount of frees that we can give away we will become a lot harder to beat.

“But this is what championship football is all about. It was never going to be an open flowing game because the pitch is tight.”

The tighter strictures governing the hand-pass rule were responsible for a good many of the stoppages but O’Rourke was accurate in his assessment that it was Derry who were penalised more in that regard.

When quizzed about the officiating, O’Rourke’s counterpart in the home dressing room kept his replies short if not sweet, although he did reveal the opinion that the overall standard of refereeing is a cause for concern.

“I’m not happy with the standard of refereeing,” said Damien Cassidy. “We got relegated earlier in the year and there were critical decisions in those games but everybody is in the same boat.”

Cassidy also expressed doubts as to whether Eoin Bradley merited the first of his two bookings but was equally forthright in admitting that Derry’s second-half display, in particular, simply wasn’t up to scratch.

Armagh may have won but O’Rourke harboured similar regrets.

“We’re delighted to have won the game. Maybe we would have liked to win it with a bit more style but it was a first-round game and it was always going to be a bit more tense and players were going to be a bit nervous.

“It was a very tight pitch and it was very hard to find space on it. It is hard to get scores on it. We done enough to win the game but what we have done here won’t be enough in three weeks’ time.

“Monaghan will be a good step up on where we were and we will have to improve in all areas of the field although we had some good performances. Our belief in ourselves will have to improve as well.

“We tightened up a wee bit when we went four points up. We invited them on to us instead of pushing on and maybe winning the game a wee bit easier.”

A fair point, perhaps, but when O’Rourke examines the DVD he will be more than pleased with his tactic of employing a seventh defender, one which restricted Derry to just three scores from play.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that the two Bradleys are very dangerous up front for Derry and that if we could nullify their threat we stood a great chance of winning. It worked for us.

“Maybe, at times, it invited them on to us a wee bit but it worked in that most of their scores did come from frees and we got out of jail once or twice and put ourselves into jail a few times as well.”