Cooney: Ref criticism unfair

GAA President Christy Cooney believes that the criticism of referees and umpires so far this summer has been totally over the top.

Referee Syl Doyle and his umpires were the latest in the firing line on Sunday when they incorrectly disallowed Graham Geraghty’s second-half goal against Kildare for a perceived square-ball offence.

It was just the latest in a serious of controversial umpiring and refereeing decisions in high-profile matches so far this summer, but Cooney believes the incident has been blown out of proportion.

“Let’s look at things in realistic proportions, let’s not just isolate a single incident when there (are) many games over a weekend,” said Cooney yesterday. “They are human beings, they are capable of making a mistake.

“There will be a questionable decision in every match of whether it’s a free that should have been given or whether the goalkeeper steps outside of the small square with a puck-out.

“It depends where you are sitting, or whether you are for or against the team in any decision. So lets not blow this out of proportion.

“I’m a little bit concerned, with respect to everyone in the media that sometimes it gets a bit out of proportion. We are at the start of a Championship. The referee and umpires made a call last Sunday and they made that decision. We’ll move on.”

The fact that the two umpires Syl Doyle consulted with were his son Ricky and his brother Richard also re-ignited the debate as to whether umpires should be still appointed by the referee.

When asked should umpires instead be appointed independently or even be referees themselves, Cooney insisted he was more than happy with the mechanism by which they’re appointed and the quality of the umpires themselves.

“Every umpire has gone through a rigorous weekend of review and training and tests and they have all been certified to a standard. There’s not an issue around that, we’d be very happy. We got challenges with regard to our umpires last year and we responded to that and so did the National Referee’s Committee under Mick Curley.

“We devised a new training programme, got umpires to take a test and in fairness anybody that is umpiring has come through that so, no, I’m very happy.”

“Last Sunday, the instant reaction from most people was ‘it could be a square goal or it mightn’t be a square goal.’ The referee had to make the judgement and the referee made the judgement that in his view it was a square ball and he called it.

“I’m sure if he called it the other way there would have been different views as well. Look, he made his judgement call and that’s it.”

Had Doyle the benefit of consulting with a video referee then he wouldn’t have made the mistake of disallowing the goal, but Cooney remains dubious about the merits of using such technology.

“What do you use technology for? Everything on the pitch – from the goal-line to the midfield to the forward line? I listened to a former player speak about Hawk-Eye technology recently and his views were ‘It’s sport, we have swings and roundabouts. Some days we get the rub of the green others we don’t.” Not every GAA player, manager or fan is nearly so magnanimous when a crucial decision goes against them though.

Because for the foreseeable future the GAA has no plans to change how umpires are appointed or how technology is utilised.

“Everything can be improved upon, we can always work with our umpires, work with our referees to make sure that at all times they make the right decision,” says Cooney.

“But human beings being human beings, like players, they will make a mistake now and then. But we try and avoid that.

“But we can’t have a situation that guarantees that we will have perfection every day we go out from players or anybody else so we have to be realistic about it.

“For the volume of games we play in our Association, the incidents that happen are minimal in my view.”