O’Connor finds fault with ref McQuillan

KERRY boss Jack O’Connor has questioned the performance of referee Joe McQuillan in Sunday’s All-Ireland decider, claiming it was more difficult for his players to win frees than it was for their opponents Dublin.

O’Connor insisted that he was not attributing their narrow loss to the decisions made by the Cavan whistler but he was adamant key decisions had gone against his team, most notably the free that Bernard Brogan pointed in the 53rd minute after a perceived ball-handling offence near the Kerry goalmouth.

“I’m caught between a rock and a hard place when talking about the referee. If you say anything about referees, you’re portrayed as a whinger. But I’ll make a general comment that it appeared to us on the line that it was much harder for our fellas to get frees than it was the other way around. The likes of Declan [O’Sullivan] and Darran [O’Sullivan] at times got a lot of abuse going through when attacking. They found it hard to get frees. There was a couple that went against us, the most obvious being for handling the ball on the ground. That was a mistake as the replay told.”