O'Rourke criticises GAA over disciplinary 'cock-up'

Meath football legend Colm O'Rourke has expressed his dissatisfaction with the current disciplinary system in the GAA, making reference to Brian Farrell's four-week ban as "a cock-up".

O'Rourke feels that the inconsistencies at refereeing and committee levels are doing Gaelic games a disservice and that the rescinding of red cards now appears to be a weekly occurrence.

During the week, Donegal's Michael Murphy (straight red card) and Dick Clerkin of Monaghan (second yellow card) were successful in their appeals at a Central Hearings Committee meeting, while referee Syl Doyle's decision to send off Farrell in Meath's Leinster SFC quarter-final defeat to Kildare was upheld.

Farrell received a straight red card for tangling with Emmet Bolton and was reported for "striking with a hand", but video evidence of the incident failed to clear him and he will miss the Royals' qualifier clash with Laois next Saturday.

In his Sunday Independent column, O'Rourke argued: "Many of these committees could be abolished and a few good men would be well able to run everything.

"As things stand and if the present set-up continues, there is an obvious need for another committee which would have to meet every Monday morning. This should be called the cock-up committee and would be the busiest of all GAA committees.

"The reason of course is because there are so many cock-ups on a Sunday that there is a full-time job to sort them out on a Monday. The latest came last week when Michael Murphy of Donegal and Dick Clerkin of Monaghan had red cards overturned.

"Quite how this committee overturned those red cards and did not do the same for Brian Farrell is amazing.

"Just to refresh people's minds: Brian Farrell gave a gentle slap to a Kildare defender who had more or less given the same to him a few seconds earlier. It is the sort of stuff that happens in games all the time.

"Neither player passed the slightest remark on the incident until the ref came back and sent off Farrell. I often got more of a belt on the back of my ear with an envelope than what happened in this incident, yet Farrell gets a month and misses at least one Championship match."

The two-time All-Ireland winner is of the opinion that the refereeing scene has become "a complete joke", and highlighted the fact that Martin Sludden remains on the referees elite panel despite some high-profile mistakes.

"I have yet to hear of one referee being dropped off the panel for sending off somebody in the wrong. Teams are just supposed to take the hit and not complain. So the cock-up committee would be an extremely busy group.

"Maybe the referees could reduce their workload substantially by acquiring a bit of cop on from somewhere and stop flashing yellow cards at every opportunity. They don't have to be given out for every foul and even after a yellow there is no need to give another one.

"Martin Sludden still has a place on the referees elite panel. The reason why he should not have been chosen this year, quite apart from the Leinster final mess (last summer), is because he refereed a whole series of games very poorly last year.

"If you play rubbish on an ongoing basis, you'll get dropped off your county team - but the same rules don't apply to referees," he surmised.

O'Rourke, a long-standing analyst on RTÉ's 'The Sunday Game', is no stranger to criticising referees.

Earlier this year in his newspaper column he wrote that "football is being destroyed by an over-fussy, interfering approach adopted by some referees".