Dublin boss Mick Bohan believes sin-bin would help men’s game

Ephie Fitzgerald couldn’t hide his deep displeasure with yellow cards and the effect he felt they had on Cork and Dublin’s All-Ireland semi-final, but his counterpart feels they would be a huge improvement in the men’s game.

Referee Maggie Farrelly showed yellow cards to two Cork players and one from Dublin during the course of the second half and Mick Bohan used the controversial dismissal of Kilkenny’s Richie Hogan during the recent All-Ireland hurling decider as testing ground for his particular theory.

“I’m a big advocate of the yellow card,” said the Dublin boss.

“I was making the point to a pal of mine after the All-Ireland hurling final: imagine if Richie Hogan got a yellow card, we’d have been all happy.

“We’d have said ‘he deserved to go’ and the game would have gone back on. You’d have been able to plan for those 10 minutes and that’s a factor of the women’s game where you have to plan for those 10 minutes.”

Dublin planned effectively for the loss of defender Niamh Collins here and it was a contributing factor in the reigning champions’ ability to shake off the Cork challenge and set up a decider with Galway in three weeks’ time.

There was a predictably strong Dublin presence among the 10,886 who watched on from the Hogan Stand for yesterday’s All-Ireland semi-final double-header and Dublin’s Niamh McEvoy believes it represented another quantum leap forward for the women’s game.

“It was a great step forward for the LGFA. They have done great work.

“This was a bit of a trial and if you think about it, there were 10,000 here.

“That’s 9,000, if not more than was at our semi-final last year.

“Hopefully, as the profile of the game keeps building, you’ll get more and more at the semi-finals. We love playing on the best surface in the country so we love playing in Croke Park.”

Bohan was even more expressive in his belief that this now needs to be the norm, rather than the exception.

“The reality is that Croke Park has its own aura about it with the stories and the history that goes with it.

“To bring your family and your kids to Croke Park for any occasion is fabulous, completely different to anyone else.

“We were terribly aware coming into this that it was a huge occasion and Croke Park made it a bigger occasion. If we’re

we’re

genuine about this as GAA people, that’s the way we have to go.

“I didn’t bring up my kids for the fellas to play in Croke Park and the girls to play somewhere else. I didn’t do that. If we talk about equality, we have to back it up.

“We’re very aware of the fact that once you put your hand up looking for equality then we must deliver with our performances because people come here to be entertained.”

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