Allen happy with referees' committee report

The report of the National Referees' Committee (NRC) has prompted much speculation about the identity of the referee who was judged to have put in the one 'poor' performance - out of 63 assessments - of the senior football championship.

This judgment comes from the summary of assessments published by the NRC earlier this week in its annual report.

But hurling is in an even rosier state, according to the same survey with no refereeing performance deemed 'poor' with 96 per cent coming in as 'good' or 'very good'.

According to the report: "The assessment of our intercounty referees provided evidence of consistently high standards of performance across both the National Leagues and championships of 2005. While there were some high-profile exceptions, mistakes in general were kept to a minimum, particularly those that could be deemed crucial."

Despite scepticism about the validity of theses findings and the testing mechanisms concerned, Cork hurling manager John Allen has given his support to the general thrust of the report, that intercounty refereeing is more than satisfactory.

"From my involvement with the team over the past three years I'm happy with the standard of senior referees. They do their best and although the assessment might be a bit on the high side, I've no major gripe with the standard. But then we've won the last two All-Irelands so our championships have ended on a positive note. We've been less likely to look for faults or for someone to blame."

Standards governing the preparation of referees have improved considerably in recent years with passing fitness tests a requirement if referees are to be appointed to national competitive matches. Seminars are also organised at which videos clips, identified in the assessment reports, are shown and discussed.

Technical advances have also been made in the area with audio links between referees and officials improving communication.

"That's only right," according to Allen. "If you take last Saturday's rugby match there were two crucial decisions taken by the video official. When you've decisions that involve the winning and losing of a Triple Crown it takes huge pressure off the referee to have that sort of back-up.

"The biggest technical issue I can think of is the time-keeping burden on referees. There should be a clock in every major stadium and it should be counted down and when time's up, the game is over no matter where the ball is. At the moment there's always a slight pressure on referees to allow a bit of extra time maybe to give a team another chance but you can win or lose a match in 30 seconds."

From a perspective that stretches back 30 years in terms of intercounty hurling, Allen feels that the greatly intensified efforts going into training referees has made an impact.

"I'd say the standard was static for about 20 years. Back then you probably could get away with not knowing the rules that well or not being that fit. Now with all the television games, a referee has to be up to speed and because hurling and the players are much quicker, a ref has to be fit."

But he acknowledges that fitness levels still have room for improvement in certain cases. "A few referees are overweight and that should be monitored because they're not able to keep up with play."

Asked if there is an area where he would like to see improvement by officials, Allen says that some frees are given too easily.

"I suppose it happens more in football but forwards often play for the foul and get frees more easily than backs. There's not a lot of consistency in that."