Horan says refs should now be semi-pro

Mayo manager James Horan believes referees should be given semi-professional status to keep up with the changes in the modern game.

Horan, reacting to the introduction of the black card, felt it was much harder now for referees to produce consistent displays.

“Refs in gaelic football, I think it’s insane what we expect them to do, he said.

“It’s probably one of the biggest fields in a field sport with 30 players. They do timing and everything else, and we are throwing more rules on top of that. I think it’s becoming an impossible job for one man to consistently perform at a high level, with the pace the game is at now. It’s getting impossible for refs.

“I think refs need to be semi-professional, they need to be brought in once a week or maybe to two or three days camp after all inter-county games to get a consistency and bring a level of competency.”

Horan added his side are preparing for the referee in charge rather than the GAA rules in the lead-up to games following the introduction of the black card rule. I’m in favour of the idea. I think it was brought in with a genuine intent but at the moment you don’t want to get dragged into it. Mickey Harte said his piece and he got rapped on the knuckles wrongly.

“It’s too inconsistent. I know that’s what everyone says but if I’m bringing a team out to try and do some work on the tackle you nearly need to know the ref in the next game and base your session on what you think that ref is going to do, as opposed to the rules that are there. That leads to huge inconsistency. It just needs to be clear and its not. I think the sin-bin would be better but the inconsistency of it is the thing. The black card definitely threw a spanner in the works for a lot of teams.

“There’s nearly one rule for league and another for championship, it definitely feels that like that. It takes all this debate and Mickey Harte in the papers and Brian McIver, those guys are putting in hour after hour as we are. For it to come down to refereeing decisions… we need to reduce that as much as we can.”

Meanwhile Mayo will likely be without midfield pairing Jason Gibbons and Barry Moran for their Connacht SFC semi-final against Roscommon on June 8.

“They will be very tight to be competitive options and are very doubtful. Michael Conroy got a knock on his ankle and Enda Varley’s groin is a little sore. Chris Barrett played his first game since last year at the weekend and came through well. Shane McHale got a nasty knock on his shoulder and is four or five weeks away, so Shane won’t be an option for Roscommon.”