Keepers must toe the line on penalties

GAA referees have been ordered to clamp down on football goalkeepers moving too early off their line for penalty kicks.

The GAA’s National Referees’ Committee has confirmed the instruction was one of the key decisions to come out of a weekend seminar at Croke Park attended by over 70 top inter-county GAA whistleblowers.

The cream of the GAA’s men in black were in Dublin for a fitness test on Friday and then a written exam last Saturday before tackling issues at a seminar later that day where the guest speaker was Dublin-born soccer referee Dermot Gallagher — who was the longest serving referee in the Premier League.

The decision to clamp down on goalkeepers moving too soon for penalty kicks was strictly enforced in the Westmeath-DIT and Kildare-DCU matches in the O’Byrne Cup last Sunday.

Westmeath referee Pat Fox ordered a late penalty to be retaken by DCU’s Conor Rafferty after the first strike had been well saved by Kildare keeper Shane Connolly. Connolly then expertly saved the retaken effort.

Elsewhere, David Glennon made no mistake when he got the chance to retake a penalty for Westmeath against DIT in Athlone – after his first effort was easily stopped by David Lyons but disallowed by ref Derek Fahy. Glennon’s goal from the retaken penalty proved vital as they held on for a 1-9 to 0-8 victory.

According to Mick Curley, the chairman of the National Referees’ Committee, the issue of goalkeepers moving too soon off their line was debated at their Saturday seminar after it was felt that referees needed to take a tougher stance on net minders.

“We ask referees to enforce the rules as comprehensively as possible and if there are areas we feel need to be looked at, we deal with them, and that was one of them and we had a discussion about penalty kicks,” he confirmed.

Goalkeepers are allowed to move along their goal line – but are not allowed off the line until after the penalty kick has been taken. The GAA had been alarmed that conceding a penalty was not the sort of punishment that it was intended to be with advancing goalkeepers part of the reason for this.

However, with the penalty spot moved from 13 metres out to just 11 metres out since last season, it has made the job of a Gaelic football goalkeeper all the more difficult and greatly increased the ratio of penalty kicks being scored.

Meanwhile Mick Curley confirmed it is the GAA’s intention to stick with their new policy of having a small pool of elite referees from which all Championship matches will be allocated.

There will be a pool of just 10 hurling referees for Championship matches and a football panel of 18 referees. The make up of these panels will be influenced by the performances of referees in the forthcoming national leagues.

Referees will find out later this week how they got on in their exams. The written test carries a minimum pass rate of 96% and is the equivalent to getting no more than two answers wrong in a list of 50 questions.

“I believe it’s a good idea to have a smaller number doing more of the games. I think in that way the level of consistency improves,” said Curley, who added that the possible introduction of score detection technology was discussed by the referees. However, he believes it’s arrival “is nowhere near the implementation stage”.