McEnaney envisaged calm debut for black card

No alarms and no surprises was the assessment of referees chief Pat McEnaney after the black card made its bow in senior inter-county football last weekend.

Aside from the odd questionable brandishing, the debut passed off quietly, which came as little shock to McEnaney given the preparations that went into the first competitive games under the new permanent playing rules.

His national referees committee had written to all four provincial councils asking them to appoint, where they could, match officials from the Championship panel.

The request come as they hoped those most versed in the new rules would provide examples to other referees. In Leinster, different match officials will be in charge of tomorrow evening’s O’Byrne Cup games as they will for next weekend’s McKenna Cup and likely both the McGrath Cup and Connacht League.

McEnaney paid little heed to the criticism of the black card from some managers after a weekend, which could have hardly gone better from his perspective.

“It’s as we expected,” he said. “We had good planning in place and the weekend went as expected, with no major issues in any of the games.

“Everybody has their opinion about them but all I can say is we’re delighted with the way it went.

“You’ll always have people making decisions in 24 or 25 games at a time and you’re always going to have questions of them but there were no alarm bells going off.

“Deliberating body-colliding, deliberately pulling down an opponent, deliberately tripping an opponent, it’s not rocket science.

“I think people are looking for a story here but I didn’t expect a whole lot (of controversy) from the weekend and I don’t think we got a whole lot from the weekend.”

Like Football Review Committee (FRC) chairman Eugene McGee, McEnaney is under no illusion that sterner examinations of the black card await as the season develops.

“Historically, that has always been the way. With or without rule changes, the level of intensity is at one level for these competitions, it increases for the national league and then increases again for the Championship.”

McGee is confident the FRC’s recommendations which have come into rule will increase respect for referees. McGee witnessed an U21 player being black carded for verbally abusing a referee in a Longford-Mayo Hastings Cup game on Saturday and believes it’s an indication of how the rules will empower match officials.

“Part of our remit with the Football Review Committee was to increase the prestige of referees and respect for referees because it has been deteriorating, no matter what anyone says, there is too many people abusing referees.

“Players, managers, spectators, everybody and this is the first step (to addressing that). The one I saw (on Saturday), it was very effective because that chap who was sent off, even though he didn’t have far to go to the dugout, he was made to feel very silly. Like, we’d all love to tell a referee to fuck off but you can’t do it. The comparison is always made with rugby and this is a first attempt to try and rectify it because it’s not fair to referees, especially club referees. It’s not fair for prominent players, maybe, to abuse them and call them all sorts of nasty names. That’s totally out. A bonus that came with this is that.”

Responding to Armagh manager Paul Grimley’s description of the black card as making “a cod of the game”, FRC member and former Derry star Tony Scullion told RTÉ: “Paul’s entitled to his opinion and rightly so. It’s his view. We felt when we sat down to look at the rules that these few changes would make the game better. We still have a physical game and everybody wants to see the game played in a physical manner. But I don’t think the public or people in GAA want to see deliberate pulldowns or deliberate trips or bodychecks. I think those three types of fouls can be brought out of our game.”