O’Neill not opposed to refs acting on replays

GAA president Liam O’Neill has suggested he would not be uncomfortable with match officials referring to replays on a giant TV screen when making major calls — so long as the decision reached proved to be correct.

The Uachtarán was speaking in Mayo yesterday, just two days after referee Marty Duffy overturned his decision to declare an Eoghan O’Gara point attempt wide during Dublin’s Leinster football final against Meath on the advice of linesman Maurice Deegan.

“Doing the right thing would never make me feel uncomfortable,” he stated when asked about officials and TV replays.

“You have to be brave enough to do the right thing and, as long as you do the right thing, that is what we are here for. Everyone wants to see if someone gets a score that they are entitled to it. That’s basic. If it’s wide everyone wants to see it wide.”

The chances of a match official actually leaning on replays at crucial moments remain slim however as contentious incidents are not normally replayed on the two big screens stationed in Croke Park. Tom Fitzpatrick, the official in charge of repeats last Sunday, believed the decision to declare a wide had been correct at the time and thus showed the incident moments later.

The subsequent re-run clearly showed O’Gara’s effort dissect the Meath posts and the decision was overturned after the intervention of Deegan who felt the wrath of Pat Gilroy, the Dublin manager, on the sideline.

At the time, it seemed as if the linesman had made the call on the basis of what had been shown on the screen at the Davin Stand end but the GAA disputed that later on Sunday evening and so, too, did O’Neill yesterday.

“The fact is that Maurice Deegan was there before [Gilroy] came over and Maurice saw what happened and that is clear. You can piece together a story afterwards, no matter what.

“The facts are that we had a referee who was unsure, a linesman who confirmed the truth of it for him and the correct decision was taken… a bit of courage by the officials all round.

“The analysts get 10 or 15 times to look at something, the referee and the linesman get to do it in real time. The correct decision was made, it was conveyed to the referee and he had the courage to change the decision.”

It was, he had said earlier, an example of “common sense” officiating but the O’Gara incident has once again kick-started the debate as to whether or not the association should be using technology to adjudicate on contentious goal-line and other scoring issues.

Whatever about the process by which O’Gara’s point was disallowed and then awarded, the fact is that players, coaches, officials and 69,656 spectators could see, more or less instantly, that the ball passed inside the Meath post.

However, TMOs would not have been able to provide conclusive evidence on some other recent controversies such as Benny Coulter’s goal for Down against Kildare in the 2010 All-Ireland semi-final or Graham Geraghty’s disallowedeffort against Kildare in last summer’s Leinster quarter-final when the issue in question was one of square ball.

O’Neill also pointed out that, if a particular type of technology is ultimately chosen, it will need to be capable of delivering the necessary information to match officials inside a timeframe which would not slow down the progression of a game.

Hawk-Eye, which was trialled at Croke Park earlier this season is currently experiencing its own difficulties due to the movement of goalposts in high winds.

“We will not be pushed on any deadline for Hawk-Eye until we know that it is 100% right and when the decisions can be conveyed to the referee in time for the game not to have moved on,” said O’Neill.

“That is the significant thing. Technology has to catch up with our game.

“We all know that Hawk-Eye works but it works in a confined space and we know where it works. The difficulty now is that it has to work in the size of our stadia to convey that information as quickly as it does for cricket or tennis.

“And we are not going to be pressurised into that. When it is right we will do it. We want to do it if it is the right thing to do but we do not want to do it until we are 100% certain that the technology compliments our decision making.”

He confirmed that will not happen this summer.