ON GAELIC GAMES:The culture of blaming match officials for everything that goes wrong is corrupting Gaelic games

IS CORMAC Reilly insane? The Meath referee found himself at the end of a championship match which one of the teams had pulled out of the fire. Scores were level and time nearly up, so what does he do? Whistle it up even a few seconds early – in the knowledge no one will complain with a replay coming down the line in six days?

After all, Dublin would be a bit numb at conceding 1-1 in a couple of minutes, Kildare would be vibrating with relief at their escape and the Leinster Council would be getting ready to green-light projects that hadn’t made the cut in this year’s funding allocations.

No. Instead he took leave of his senses and called a tricky incident as he saw it and made the decision without compunction, possibly even aware he was going to be excoriated for his trouble. Maybe he believed that by doing the right thing he would avoid being denounced for contriving a draw – because as becomes evident each season, many believe the GAA operates a profit-share scheme for referees who facilitate replays.

But that impulse – if it was what guided him – proved to be most misleading.

As we all know, what actually happened was that Cormac Reilly became the most vilified man in Ireland in the immediate aftermath of last Sunday’s Leinster semi-final.

It was protested that he should have let the draw stand – the match was too entertaining and everyone wanted a replay, it wasn’t fair on Kildare to lose when they deserved a draw, that Dublin’s progress to the Leinster final was now in some way tainted.

When a dramatic match is decided by a disputed free there is bound to be some controversy, but why nearly every week does the first item on the agenda have to be refereeing decisions?

The general point is there should be acceptance of what happens. By playing or being otherwise involved in Gaelic games or most field sports, you accept a system of human arbitration that won’t always be infallible. Even rugby, with its video review, isn’t in a position to eliminate errors.

So if you’re on the wrong end of an incorrect refereeing decision, get over it; you probably benefited from errors at other times.

On Sunday, there was much comment on Kildare’s recent struggles with injustice, which didn’t appear to register that the square ball goal they conceded to Down in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final had been balanced by Eamonn Callaghan’s goal having been invalidated by excessive steps.

This doesn’t diminish the team’s frustration at losing out to incorrect decisions, but it shows the extent to which hard luck stories and grievances with referees form the narrative emerging from matches.

Neither is this confined to losing teams.

On Sunday, in the post-match analysis on RTÉ, Pat Spillane and Colm O’Rourke were trenchantly critical of the referee not alone because of the late free, but also because the sending-off of Eoghan O’Gara was deemed harsh and unfair.

That reaction to the match was simply not supportable by video evidence. The first yellow card shown to the Dublin full forward was accompanied by the referee holding up two fingers to indicate persistent fouling. The second yellow that led to dismissal could as easily have been a straight red.

This is not exceptional, and it has become a theme of The Sunday Game punditry that referees are “ruining the game”.

Yet, frequently, the evidence comes down to subjective assertion that particular fouls don’t merit the action taken by match officials regardless of what the rule book says.

There is much grumbling in the wider world of Gaelic games about the role of refereeing assessors and their insistence on rules being enforced. The palm tree justice advocated generally recommends both “consistency” and “common sense” (ie, made up as referee goes along) officiating – despite these being contradictory requirements.

The only consistency can come from applying the rules as they are written.

Some refs get away with extemporising, but consistency suffers as a result.

Michael Curley, the chair of the national referees committee, made the point yesterday that it was bad enough for them to be pilloried for making mistakes, but to get the same treatment when they’re correct is ridiculous.

For all the outrage over Reilly’s decision, the incident takes repeated viewing. The first instinct after the free was awarded was to watch it again. The referee doesn’t have that luxury. In my match report, I incorrectly said the decision had been made “from distance”. In fact, the referee was well positioned.

Bernard Brogan and Andriú MacLochlainn only come into shot as the ball is going in and there is no alternative camera angle to show the incident in its entirety.

RTÉ analyst Kevin McStay – one panellist on television, it has to be said, who judges indiscipline according to the rule book and who corrected his colleagues on the O’Gara red card – asked why would a defender commit such a foul.

I prefer the question – why would a referee instead of allowing a match peter out into a draw decide to risk what inevitably came to pass unless he was sure of what he had seen?

There were other criticisms of Reilly’s refereeing, and it is not necessary to go into them in forensic detail to make the point that the culture of blaming match officials for everything that goes wrong is corrupting Gaelic games.

How can managers whose players have kicked wides, lost possession and missed tackles come out after a match and go on about teams training so hard that they deserve nothing less than flawless refereeing?

How can pundits who need to watch incidents in slow motion be so absolute in their condemnation of someone who is charged with making calls in real time?

In an ideal world a referee should be regarded in the same manner as a goalpost or a crossbar, an influence whose caprice you just have to put up with. Giving out about officials is about as availing as complaining that the woodwork isn’t up to standard, that it favoured the opposition and wasn’t consistent.

When do we see enraged supporters running out and attacking a crossbar that kept out a shot that “deserved” a goal?

Not that you’d want to be putting ideas in people’s heads.