Fergal Horgan is the latest high-profile ex-referee to lay blame squarely at the door of Croke Park over the inconsistency in how hurling is being policed.
A day on from Brian Gavin’s comments in the that a lack of Croke Park leadership is short-changing hurling referees, Horgan has called on GAA top brass to “get rid of the assessor in the stand” and bring in former referees to mentor the current crop.
The three-time All-Ireland hurling final referee said Ben O’Connor was spot on with his “refereeing by numbers” claim, accusing Croke Park of burying their head on the issue.
Horgan said Croke Park’s refereeing committees are filled with individuals who “know nothing about refereeing or how to referee”.
And following on from Brian Gavin’s remarks that Pat McEnaney was the best referee’s chairman he ever had because “he had that feel for the game”, Horgan urged Croke Park to enlist ex-referees as mentors.
“Ben was very legitimate in his remarks. I think there are a lot of people refereeing to the man in the stand, they are trying to play it safe and do a tick-the-box exercise. Referees should be let referee the match the way they see fit, and analyse it then the Monday morning after with one or two former referees who are their mentor,” Horgan began.
“Consistency only comes with experience. It is very easy to be consistent when you know you are going to get the games. Fellas become inconsistent when they’re worried about what is going to happen after this latest match.
“That is where the inconsistency is coming in, and that is where the mentoring needs to come in. I know Johnny Ryan and Willie Barrett were mentoring Johnny Murphy for a few years, and he ended up getting an All-Ireland final.
“All the young referees need to be mentored by a former inter-county referee. Don’t mind the fella in the stand, get rid of him. He’s knocking the confidence out of the referees. A mentor is a different man.
“A mentor will pick up the phone for half an hour on a Monday morning, and he’ll go through the match with the referee and help him find improvement. And then let the mentor pass informed opinion back to Croke Park, he’ll tell them, ‘this fella has what it takes, but needs more experience and needs to be doing the big games regularly’.”
Having been “banging this drum for years”, Horgan holds out no hope of Croke Park reaching out to former refs.
“Why is there that absence? Brian Gavin did four All-Irelands finals, I did three, and James McGrath did two. They are not going to ask any of the three of us to come in and mentor because we didn’t leave on their terms. I made my feelings known when I was leaving, and so did James McGrath. That’s nine All-Ireland finals between the three of us and we’re not having any contribution to younger referees coming through.
“We’ve been banging this drum for years, even when we were refereeing ourselves. They don’t want to know about it, they’ll brush it under the carpet.”
Horgan agreed only in part with Ben O’Connor’s insistence that no card should be shown when a player’s hurl makes contact with an opponent’s head.
“You can’t allow anything to the head. The experienced referee will be able to tell between an accidental flick to the helmet that causes no damage whatsoever, and when I was there, I’d give a free only and a finger-wag to the player. But the younger lads will go by what they are being told, and that is anything to the head is red.”
Disagreeing with the contributing to a melee justification for sending off Shane Barrett and Jason Forde during Saturday’s Cork-Tipp match, Horgan believes the black card punishment for such an offence in football should be transferred across to hurling.
