GAA:BENNY COULTER has been ruled out of Down's championship campaign after suffering a suspected broken ankle on Monday night. The 2010 All Star forward sustained the injury while playing for his club Mayobridge in a league match against Bryansford.

Down boss James McCartan last night confirmed Coulter is definitely ruled out of the county’s Ulster championship opener against Fermanagh on June 3rd. Further tests will be carried out later this week to determine to extent of the injury, but McCartan believes it is a break, rather than ligament damage.

He also fears Dan Gordon will miss out with the ankle injury he picked up in the league against Laois a month ago.

“If there was two men you wouldn’t want to be without, it’s those two,” admitted McCartan.

One piece of good news is that Danny Hughes will be fit after the hamstring injury he picked up towards the end of the league. Elsewhere Derry defender Gerard O’Kane confirmed he will be available for Derry’s championship game against Donegal or Cavan on June 17th.

Meanwhile, Kilkenny’s Brian Cody, wants the nameless assessors to release referees from the bonds of scrutiny. That, Cody believes, is the main burden weighing down his beloved game as he enters a 14th summer at the helm.

“I just think referees are being put in too much of a straitjacket the whole time with regards to the follow-on assessment,” said Cody, speaking yesterday ahead of Sunday’s Allianz Division One final against Cork in Thurles.

“I mean, since when are these assessors geniuses either?”

It sticks in Cody’s craw that Kilkenny are still painted as an overly-physical team. The collisions in hurling, he is adamant, are an essential element to a sport already diluted by referees being put under pressure to stamp out perceived indiscipline.

“I worry, and for some reason everybody thinks it is madness, but I worry about the physicality of the game being looked at in a negative way. It’s just part and parcel of the game and always has been.

“There is no dirt in the game at all. You couldn’t even begin to have it because we are scrutinised by cameras and laws looking back at things, but in my head I totally believe that they are trying to take genuine physicality out of the game. And I wish they would stop.

“Of course, I’ll be probably pilloried for pretending this is the type of game we want to play and we are looked upon as this massively physical team. I don’t see it that way at all.”

But it was the assessors that received the full blast of his dismay yesterday. “To me, it can make things too complicated by putting referees on chairs in a circle and saying, ‘look at this, look at that – why wasn’t that a yellow card?’ I go through this every year at a meeting up in Croke Park and we talk about it and we probably argue about it. Not (only) me but several others as well.

“I just think the referees have to be allowed to use their common sense, to use their interpretation of how the game should be played and the spirit of how the game should be played.

“Referees are vitally important people in the association – I respect them massively – but I have always given out about the fact they are assessed left, right and centre and that the league is always refereed differently to the championship.”

And what of Davy Fitzgerald’s gripe, after Clare’s semi-final defeat to Kilkenny, that the elite counties are refereed different to all the others? “That’s Davy’s opinion. I have a lot of time for Davy Fitz, he’s a terrific GAA man.

“I have never felt the referee played with us, but then again I don’t ever feel the referee played massively against us either . . . most of the time.”

But, Brian, did you not ever use your pine-tree stature on the sideline to influence a referee?

“No I’m not that clever, I wouldn’t be devious like that at all in the slightest. I’m not saying I don’t stand on the side of the pitch and say ‘Jesus ref’ or whatever it is, shouting. Of course I might. I mean I’m fairly ordinary.”

Like any ordinary man, common sense is what he craves.

“They are being assessed out of the woods altogether. Referees are going out to do the very best job they can. They are going to make mistakes. I make several mistakes managing the Kilkenny team. The players I pick make mistakes as well, everybody does. Referees are going to make genuine mistakes. But they should be left alone.”