Remorseful Rushe says strike on Horgan ‘like a scene from Gladiator’

Liam Rushe says he owes Cork forward Pat Horgan an apology for striking him last weekend, admitting that a replay of the Croke Park incident looked ‘like a scene from Gladiator’.

The Dublin defender accepted he should have been handed a straight red card, instead of a yellow, for his dangerous 58th minute pull on Horgan.

The incident came just eight minutes after referee James Owens had controversially dismissed Ryan O’Dwyer and Rushe suggested he was treated lightly as a result.

The former All Star revealed he struck out because Horgan was impeding him and referee Owens hadn’t taken any action.

“I said (to Owens), ‘If you’d blown your f***ing whistle, I wouldn’t have pulled back’,” said Rushe. “They were my words at the time. I looked at it again, I saw a nice slow motion GIF online and I suppose I should apologise to Pat Horgan. Thankfully, I didn’t do him any damage. I was just frustrated. He was holding my arm and my hurley so (I struck out). I didn’t think I would be sent off, to be honest. I didn’t realise it was that bad until after I saw it and then I saw it and I realised that, yeah, it’s like a scene from Gladiator.”

It’s been argued that the decision to dismiss O’Dwyer for two yellow card offences was harsh but that the lighter treatment of Rushe balanced out the earlier big call.

At the time of O’Dwyer’s dismissal, Dublin were leading by a point. Anthony Nash pointed the resulting free and with the extra numbers, Cork moved five clear by full-time.

“He (O’Dwyer) was fiercely unlucky,” claimed Rushe. “I couldn’t hold it against him. I actually came off the field fit to kill him because I thought he had gotten a straight red card. I wasn’t looking when he got his second yellow. I didn’t realise he had got the first yellow. I thought that Danny Sutcliffe had gotten it.

“But it’s not his fault. I would agree that they were very tough bookings. Maybe he was scapegoated a little bit. Definitely, I think that first card was awarded on reputation. It was hardly a foul, never mind a yellow card.”

“Until the 66th minute or so I was convinced we were going to get a draw,” he added. “I said, ‘He (Owens) feels bad over sending off O’Dwyer and he’s going to give us a handy free to draw level’.