Clare management confront Munster Council officials over injury-time mix-up

There was a stormy confrontation outside the referees’ room in Semple Stadium yesterday with Clare management confronting Munster Council officials seeking an explanation for the amount of injury time played at the end of yesterday’s Clare-Limerick Munster Championship game.

The fourth official’s board appeared to show 1, then 4, with many spectators believing that four minutes of injury time were to be played, only for referee Colm Lyons to blow up a minute-and-a-half into injury time.

Eventually Willie Barrett of the Munster Council emerged from the referees’ room to explain to Clare manager Davy Fitzgerald that the fourth official’s board had signalled four for an earlier substitution — believed to be Limerick’s Seamus Hickey — and that the one signalled by the board referred to the amount of injury time.

Fitzgerald was clearly dissatisfied with Barrett’s response and later discussed the matter with the media. “The players thought four and I thought four,” said Fitzgerald. “That’s why I wasn’t worried. I thought we’d definitely get a leveller. When they were coming out with the ball I thought Limerick overplayed it at the end; I thought we could have got a free.

“They are decisions in the last year, if you look at it, we’re not getting them. In saying that I thought Limerick’s character today was phenomenal. I thought they fought tooth and nail, and fair play to them. It was a great game.

“They showed four, he said it was one. We all thought it was four and so did the team. But listen, they have their explanation for it, something about some lad that came off or something.”