Gilroy: Refs take flak for new rules

DUBLIN manager Pat Gilroy has said the rules — not the referees — are to blame for the recent rise in criticism of match officials.

The St Vincent’s man believes the rule-makers have to share the responsibility for what has been happening in this year’s All-Ireland Senior Football championship.

According to Gilroy, the explanation of the tackle is open to interpretation.

“I think the biggest problem for referees is the rules. They probably have to officiate on rules that are very hard to officiate on. You just have to look at the tackle itself — what they officiate on, and what the rule book says, is probably a little bit different.

“I mean they do allow some contact and they allow you to try to nick the ball, it’s not just as straightforward as shoulder to shoulder, and maybe knock the ball out.

“They’ve been asked to officiate on rules that, particularly in that area, causes the most frustration. So I think the rules are probably the hardest thing for them.”

With two wins from two in the Leinster championship, it is hardly surprising Gilroy has found little fault with referees’ performances so far.

Naturally, he felt match official Cormac Reilly was correct to award Bernard Brogan a free against Kildare in second-half injury-time, which won Dublin passage through to Sunday’s provincial final against Wexford.

“From our point of view I don’t think it has been too bad, to be honest. I can understand the frustrations, though, I suppose going back to the famous last free in our game.

“Frees weren’t given for that before and that’s the consistency part that people get upset about.

“It’s totally understandable because very similar things happened at least 10 times in the game, and there weren’t frees for them.”

The matter of that free was discussed at the Kildare County Board monthly meeting on Tuesday night, which chairman John McMahon described as “an open, frank and honest debate”.

Gilroy revealed Dublin have had a number of inter-county referees such as Reilly and David Coldrick in to officiate their open-to-the-public training matches. “You get who you are sent,” he said.

Former referee John Bannon has been working in an advisory capacity with Kildare while Kieran McGeeney had ironically called in Reilly two years ago to take charge of a training game.

Gilroy further supported referees by highlighting they had told managers that they were going to make an issue out of persistent fouling such as dragging and pulling jerseys.

“In fairness to the referees as well, the managers are brought in and one of the things they said they were going to try to cut out this year was the pulling and dragging of players off the ball and I think they have been inclined that way, but that also makes it look like they’re being fussy.

“But I think they called it out in January and they’ve been consistent about trying to stop holding and pulling and dragging, and I think that’s fair enough.

“And before both matches they’ve been saying, ‘look, if people are holding and pulling, I’m going to blow them for it’.”

Gilroy also defended the decision to keep Eoghan O’Gara in his starting line-up for Sunday despite him having being sent off for a second yellow card against Kildare.

“We’ve been doing work with him for the last two weeks,” admitted Gilroy about improving the forward’s tackling technique. “A big part of it is down to how strong he is.

“If he puts his arm on somebody, they fall over. Another fella does it, it’s nothing. He just has to be conscious of it.

“He’s done a lot of work around it and he’s very conscious he’ll be fine.”

Meanwhile, Dublin chairman Andy Kettle has criticised the decision to fix the minor footballers’ Leinster final against Meath for a 12pm throw-in on Sunday before the seniors’ showdown.

“I would suggest one way of doing it would be to flip the two games, let the seniors play at 2pm but let the minors play afterwards. There is no reason why it couldn’t. It is not going to interfere with television, a lot of the crowd would stay on”