Croker deny blackballing Fox for not seeing red
The Westmeath referee hasn’t been appointed by the Central Competitions Control Committee (CCCC) to preside over a league game since that Division 2 round two game in Omagh on February 19, his second appointment in the competition after taking charge of the Laois v Meath game.
It is understood Fox was asked by the CCCC to review video footage of an incident involving McMenamin and Donegal’s Paddy McGrath — when the Tyrone player appeared to stamp on his opponent — but elected to stand by his original decision.
Fox refused to comment on the matter when contacted yesterday.
However, the GAA’s national match officials manager Pat Doherty insisted there was nothing untoward about Fox’s absence from the referees’ list since the Tyrone-Donegal game.
“It’s utterly coincidental that Pat Fox hasn’t refereed since then,” said Doherty. “The bottom line is we have 50 referees and with 120 league games we have attempted to make a decent effort to ensure each referee gets two or three games.
“Four of the referees will have done four games by the end of the leagues, some of them have done one game so far but the vast majority will have done two or three by the end of the league.
“That game was Pat Fox’s second in the league and there is still another round to go.
“The appointments for the last round of fixtures have just been made so he will have refereed either two or three games.”
Fox is regarded as one of the best football officials in the country and was a member of the 18-man championship panel of referees last year.
Ironically, he took charge of last year’s Munster SFC final between Kerry and Limerick in which Tomás Ó Sé was retrospectively served with a four-week suspension after Fox agreed with the CCCC the Kerry defender should have been shown a red card for elbowing an opponent.
Fox’s dealing with the McMenamin incident brings to mind a couple of other examples in which inter-county referees appear to have been overlooked for not changing their decisions after being asked to review video footage.
Following the 2007 All-Ireland semi-final between Cork and Meath, referee Brian Crowe was asked by the CCCC to determine if he was satisfied with the yellow card he handed Noel O’Leary following an incident with Graham Geraghty.
Cavan referee Crowe backed his original verdict on the matter, a decision which ensured O’Leary was cleared to play in the final against Kerry.
However, Crowe took charge of just one league match the following year.
“Even the dogs in the street know it was the end for me as regards big matches,” Crowe is reported to have said in a 2009 newspaper interview. “You only have to look at the handful of games I subsequently got.”
Longford’s John Bannon was also instructed by the CCCC to take a second look at an altercation during the 2009 All-Ireland semi-final between Cork and Tyrone for which he brandished John Miskella with a yellow card.
But he also chose not to upgrade Miskella’s offence to a red card, thus ensuring he also played in the final.
Bannon had signalled the previous June that 2009 was to be his last season whistling at inter-county level.
The influence of the CCCC on officials’ decision-making is a growing concern, not only for a number of managers but the referees themselves.
“We’ve been told that going against video footage has no bearing on future appointments but that doesn’t appear to be the case,” said one former inter-county referee. “But then if you give a red card and it’s then downgraded by the authorities, as has been done in recent weeks, the referee is never punished.”
In the past month, four players as well as Waterford hurling manager Davy Fitzgerald have either had dismissals thrown out or proposed suspension reduced by the Central Hearings Committee.
Bannon, via his club Legan Sarsfields, will next month make a second attempt at changing the CCCC’s right to request officials to review disciplinary incidents and impose retrospective bans.
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