How Big Brother is watching but also helping referees

Mentoring programme looks to partner up former match officials with current ones

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE: Johnny Murphy is amongst the match officials partaking in a new pilot scheme that aims to assist in the development of top-flight GAA referees. Picture: Eóin Noonan/Sportsfile

How to play it cute as an inter-county manager? Lesson one — don’t blame the referee. Instead, blame “the man in the stand”, the man who he is trying to impress so as to be appointed for a later, bigger game. That way, you are seen to be sympathetic to a referee whom you may come across further down the line.

Examples: “It’s down to the pressure that referees are under to apply the rules to the letter of the law” — Pat Gilroy, March 2011, six months before Dublin win the All-Ireland SFC.