Harte: Black cards make ref's job harder

Tyrone manager, Mickey Harte has reiterated his opposition to the black card but says he is only against it because it makes a referee’s job harder.

Harte was unhappy when Conor Maginn wasn’t shown a black card after conceding a penalty in the

drawn Ulster championship tie last Sunday and Maginn went on to score Down’s third goal as they rallied to turn a seven-point deficit into a two-point lead.

Seán Cavanagh pointed two late frees to secure a replay for Tyrone but Harte maintains that referees have too much on their plate.

“It’s what I’ve been talking about long, long ago in that there’s a lot asked of referees” said Harte.

“They’ve a lot of things to take care of in live time and I would never underestimate how difficult it is.

“I was opposed to the black card coming in and people thought I was opposed to it because of the cynical Tyrone outfit we have but that’s not the case. I’ve been consistent on this and said the very thing that the black card was put in for, the yellow card was supposed to be applied to for years and wasn’t being done consistently. And that’s why there appeared to be a need for this black card.

“But I think if you’re adding more cards, adding more… even the advantage rule, I think, is a very difficult rule to implement consistently as well. Consider all the details involved in that.

“The referee has to recognise the foul, he has to put his hand up, he has to keep it up for up to five seconds, then determine whether advantage has been accrued or not and then, if he determines that there is not advantage, take it back to where the individual foul occurred. That’s a lot of things to ask somebody to keep in their head while maintaining control of the rest of the game.

“This rule was introduced in a hurry and I think it needed to be experimented with.”

Looking at the trip to Newry, Harte is just relieved to have another bite of the cherry, having begun contemplating the qualifiers.

“It was a strange kind of thing as we were really in control in the first half and should have been further ahead and we didn’t make the best of that. So then Down had their purple patch and got us in a really bad place and we’re delighted that we were able to pull ourselves out of that bad place.

“We can take some heart out of it in that every year that you achieve something useful you get scary days like that. I’m not saying we can lean on that but there is a history of having very close calls in the years that we’ve been successful. So I hope history repeats itself.”

Unsurprisingly, the Errigal Ciarán legend is completely unconcerned by the fact that his charges have been transformed from amongst the likeliest to topple Dublin to no-hopers in the big scheme of things.

“That’s the fickle nature of commentary I suppose. I’m not surprised at that at all. We’re not in control of whether we’re considered hot favourites or not. That’s other people’s opinion. We try to believe in ourselves and know what we can and cannot do and I don’t think you can swing as much from one side to the other as a result of 70 minutes of any game.

“So I think we’re somewhere in between. We’re maybe not as good as people were suggesting we might be. And we’re certainly not as bad as some people believe we are after last week.”

(By Daragh Ó Conchúir)