Referees panel 2016

[5 Sams]

Syferus, the last 64 AI senior finals in football and hurling have gone by without the involvement of a referee from north of the border.  Can you see why some officials may not be thrilled about this ?

Paddy Hughes reffed the 2013 Senior Club AI final and nearly made a hole of it. Refs just need to be good. County or province doesn't matter. Sadly good refs are scarce.

Ask the Cork lads about him after last year. I hope Branigan does well...I rate him...best ref in Down.

[GlenMan]

Syferus, the last 64 AI senior finals in football and hurling have gone by without the involvement of a referee from north of the border.  Can you see why some officials may not be thrilled about this ?

Paddy Hughes reffed the 2013 Senior Club AI final and nearly made a hole of it. Refs just need to be good. County or province doesn't matter. Sadly good refs are scarce.

Ideally the GAA would have a system like the Premier League in which Referees are professional. Even making ref's semi-professional would make a huge difference in quality and standard of refereeing.

It's things like this which are sometimes hamstrung by being a (almost) totally voluntary organisation. We "can't" criticise ref's because they're volunteers.

[johnneycool]

The original Mr Gough was the last referee from north of the border to get an AI senior final back in 1983. If each county had an equal chance of representation, there should have been another half a dozen since then. As officials from the Wee Six never get a look-in for the hurling at all, they are entitled to feel pretty disgruntled.

I'd love to agree with you and there's been some pretty decent hurling referees in the North recently, I just think they're not exposed to southern hurling enough during their formative years, mainly logistics and possible arrogance from the hurling elite and you've only to look how Barry Kelly was initially frowned upon when refereeing in the Munster championship years ago and him being from Westmeath and all...

[Esmarelda]

GAA needs to start putting money into getting Dublin referees........

In 10 years time then every ref will be a Dub and there'll be no baytin the hoors with every game in Croke Park as well as every player a semi-pre (ahem)

When Kelly, Duffy, Kinsella, Lane, Coldrick and Deegan are still there it tells you where the standard is and how much of top level reffing is about glad-handing and who you know.

Gough the best by a good bit for me. Our own Paddy Neilan is one of the few decent refs too.

Gough stood out for me last year too.

To be a linesman you need to tell which team knocked the ball over the sideline and if anyone is boxing off the ball. That it?

[Jinxy]

Cormac Reilly dropped altogether?!
This is an outrage.
No doubt the Mayo mafia had a hand in it.

[Unlaoised]

Kinsella is loved by the inter county players ...I think he is decent gets a lot of big games for a reason...

Maurice isn't as good as he used to be

Duffy -worst ref in the country at top level by far..

Nolan -Wicklow is poor and always favours the bigger teams-Watch it its incredible.

Hughes-Armagh is very good in my opinion

Kelly of Longford and Gough of Meath are also good ref's

[Syferus]

Kinsella is a very poor ref. Same bracket as Duffy and Rielly.

[aontroim abu]

The original Mr Gough was the last referee from north of the border to get an AI senior final back in 1983. If each county had an equal chance of representation, there should have been another half a dozen since then. As officials from the Wee Six never get a look-in for the hurling at all, they are entitled to feel pretty disgruntled.

I'd love to agree with you and there's been some pretty decent hurling referees in the North recently, I just think they're not exposed to southern hurling enough during their formative years, mainly logistics and possible arrogance from the hurling elite and you've only to look how Barry Kelly was initially frowned upon when refereeing in the Munster championship years ago and him being from Westmeath and all...

+1 with experience

[sligoman2]

Lads I keep saying that you need two refs for every county game.  One man can't do the job and the linesmen are not the answer.  How do you expect one man to keep tabs on 30 people in an area of 160 yards by 90 approx. especially with the pace in the modern game.
If you had two refs, Louth would have won Leinster in 2010 as one of the refs would have been close enough to see what happened.

Hopefully the gaa will cop on soon and get two refs before more games are destroyed by refs

[Esmarelda]

Lads I keep saying that you need two refs for every county game.  One man can't do the job and the linesmen are not the answer.  How do you expect one man to keep tabs on 30 people in an area of 160 yards by 90 approx. especially with the pace in the modern game.
If you had two refs, Louth would have won Leinster in 2010 as one of the refs would have been close enough to see what happened.

Hopefully the gaa will cop on soon and get two refs before more games are destroyed by refs

Why do you say that?

[joemamas]

Lads I keep saying that you need two refs for every county game.  One man can't do the job and the linesmen are not the answer.  How do you expect one man to keep tabs on 30 people in an area of 160 yards by 90 approx. especially with the pace in the modern game.
If you had two refs, Louth would have won Leinster in 2010 as one of the refs would have been close enough to see what happened.

Hopefully the gaa will cop on soon and get two refs before more games are destroyed by refs

Why do you say that?

I agree, I have been saying this for some time.
The amount of time that is wasted when the ref has to run back behind the play to issue a warning or Yellow card is daft. I was in Croke Park last Sunday, thought the ref was ok/sensible with the exception of a few missed calls on that whining bollocks Donaghy. But there was at least two occasion where he had to backtrack to follow up on some incidents or other, a lot of time wasted.
In hurling if the Ref had a motorbike, he might, just might be able to stay up with the play.

[Applesisapples]

When will they get rid of that guy duffy. Ruins every game he refs.

As does Eddie Kinsella. Good to see a Tyrone referee on the list. Sean Hurson is the first since the great Martin Sludden I think.

And every bit as bad.

[Applesisapples]

Brian Gavin is a decent ref, but no way he passes the fitness test as set out by Croke Park.

[muppet]

Syferus, the last 64 AI senior finals in football and hurling have gone by without the involvement of a referee from north of the border.  Can you see why some officials may not be thrilled about this ?

That really is a disgraceful statistic.

[Il Bomber Destro]

Some utterly incompetent referees there.

I have to say that the guy who refereed the Galway-Derry game last year (Lane from Cork) gave the worst refereeing display I can ever remember. He rode Derry non-stop for 70 minutes, I wouldn't just put that one down to incompetence, he seemed to have his mind made up from minute one that he was going to favour one team over another. McIver cried wolf about refereeing displays a bit too much last year but he was totally justifying in saying what he did about Lane. Saddening to see a chap like not being held accountable for such a performance.

Cassidy and Duffy are complete idiots of referees and you just know that whatever game they have is going to erupt into farce.

Think the two Laois men are poor referees but have a knack of getting a lot of big games despite messing up some big games.

Hughes gets a fair bit of unwarranted stick but tends to be a bit fussy for my liking.

McQuillan, Gough and Coldrick would be the best of the lot there. There are a few others there who I have not witnessed in action yet.