Staying calm in the storm

THE conversation with an inter-county hurler had wound onto referees.

“Dickie Murphy?” said the player. “Sometimes he’d give a free against you, and that smile...” Pause. “Good ref, though.”

The man with the most famous grin in GAA officialdom can recall his first All-Ireland clearly. As he says, that’s the one you aim for.

“It happened for me in 1992,” says Dickie Murphy.

“It’s what you set out on the road of refereeing for in the first place, I suppose. I gave a penalty against Cork that day – against Denis Walsh, actually, and he still reminds me of that. He thought it was harmless, his tackle, but what was harmless then wouldn’t be harmless now. It wasn’t contentious, though.

“That’s the big change. With television everyone is on camera the whole time and fellas can’t do anything out of the way – there’ll be uproar if they do from some sections of the media and matters are sent to the CCCC.”

Murphy wasn’t nervous. He’d served his apprenticeship.

“I’d handled an All-Ireland semi-final, an All-Ireland club final and so on. I wasn’t too bad.

“The All-Ireland is still a big occasion, it’s a huge game for everyone, but I was probably more nervous in the last few years than I was for the first one – the older you get the more the nerves come at you generally, and refereeing is no different.”

For highlights, the Wexford man recalls big clashes in the Munster championship.

“I was fortunate enough to handle Clare-Tipperary when they seemed to meet every summer in Páirc Uí Chaoimh a few years ago. Those were fantastic occasions, big crowds coming to every match – and great matches. I also handled the first All-Ireland for Clare in 1995 – the outpouring of emotion that day in Croke Park was unforgettable.”

Murphy’s affable manner wasn’t misleading. He was keen to let play go as far as possible.

“Most players will see how far they can go with the referee – I suppose I was renowned for letting the game flow in as far as possible.

“Maybe you wouldn’t get away with that nowadays to the same extent but at that time fellas were more inclined to get up after a knock and carry on for the next ball.

“I’m not saying it’s different today but nowadays you seem to have to blow for a lot more fouls; back then lads accepted a knock.”

He accepts that consistency is the ideal, though it’s difficult to achieve.

“The problem is that one ref will leave something go and another ref will blow for it,” he says.

“While Croke Park is looking for uniformity, that’s not easy. Referees are like players – everyone has a different style and a different approach.

“If you were a hurler you’d love to be like DJ Carey but we can’t all be like that. It’s the same for referees.

“My approach was that I’d try to give the players every opportunity to hurl and try to get away without putting someone off. You’re not going to bring all the players along with you all the time, but you have to accept that.”

Murphy says the reins can’t be as tight with a knockout game. “In the championship you have to let a bit go – within reason, obviously – because it’s the championship. The last thing people want to see is a free-ridden game, and you have to strike a balance between letting it flow and punishing foul play.

“In football Pat McEneaney can get the feel of a game and let it go to an extent that the players can play. Some people might say if you let the game go then you’re not able to pull it back, to regain control, if something happens, but I think players respond if you let them play. If you start off being very fussy then you’re upsetting the players – and yourself, because you’re thinking, ‘can I handle this?’

“In the first few minutes of a championship game fellas’ blood is boiling, they’ve been in the dressing room for half an hour and they get the gee-up from the manager – but that’ll run out of their system and then they’ll hurl away.

“Now if a fella pulls across the back of someone’s head in the first minute he’s still got to go, but you’ve got to expect a bit of shouldering and pushing early on.”

Murphy says that the officials face a different pressure now compared to 20 years ago.

“Most people don’t realise that for the referee – particularly one who’s trying to make his way up the ladder – the assessor is the important thing, and referees starting out at inter-county level can’t go a la carte with the rules.”

Murphy sees no great need for change when it comes to the playing rules of hurling.

“The GAA is probably caught because it appears that if you bring in a rule in football you have to bring it in for hurling, but I think the rules in hurling are fine. The tinkering with hurling is more as a result of football but I think the existing rules of hurling are good enough.

“I love going to the big football games as a spectator, but the way the game has developed, it’s the opposite to hurling. In hurling you get rid of the ball as quickly as you can, but in football you hold it as long as you can. They’re very different to referee as a result: in football, if I have the ball it’s very hard to take it off me legally, and players invite frees as a result, and because of that it’s a very difficult game.

“In general, though, as long as a referee is fair, that’s all players want. I was involved with the Wexford seniors as a selector for a couple of years and I saw the huge effort players put in. If the referee is fair then they’re happy.”

Any regrets over calls that might have gone wrong? “I always maintained that I called it as I saw it on the day,” he replies. “Something like the Louth-Meath game never happened to me, and there but for the grace of God go all of us. Someone watching a game I handled on the television that evening might say ‘that was soft enough’, depending on their angle, but I always stood over it. “Okay, thousands might have said ‘that was a terrible decision’, but I always called it as I saw it. And I always slept that night after it.”