“AH ref, would you let the game go!”
You can hear the roar in your mind from the days when people were allowed to go and watch football.
Not only is a referee’s failure to let an attack develop frustrating, but it can also be hugely consequential.
In one quiet swoop, the GAA’s Standing Committee For Playing Rules and its Annual Congress in late February have left referees hung out.
By rewording the advantage rule, they have effectively removed it.
In 99 per cent of instances this year, there will be no advantage, unless a referee takes it into his own hands to operate with one.
And for a referee, that can spell bad news in the boardroom. Their job is to control a game by the rules that are written for them, rather than any misguided notions they might have about improving the spectacle.
Referees have been told that from now on, the free is the advantage.
Where they see any foul, they blow the whistle. The only exception is if a player is galloping off into free space.
The advantage rule probably needed a tweak, but one that would have taken it the other way instead.
The five-second rule didn’t really work as it was. In certain scenarios, five seconds was too long. In others, it’s too short. A simple change to ‘five seconds or after a pass has been completed’ would have changed the context for the better.
Instead, they have changed it so that an advantage can only be played where there is a clear goalscoring opportunity or where the player fouled “has time and space”, in which case you’d wonder who was close enough to have fouled him.
The likelihood is that in this year’s Allianz Leagues and the Championships, we will see a dramatic increase in the number of frees awarded.
When this happens, do not blame the referee.
It was clear on the Teams call yesterday with referees’ chief Donal Smyth that he felt unable to convey his feelings.
When asked if he would have preferred the rule be left alone, the Meath man didn’t say much, but it was as much in what he didn’t say.
“The reality is that’s what the rule is at the moment, Congress decided in their wisdom that’s the way they wanted the game refereed and that’s what the rule says.
“Referees will have to get on with what the rule says rather than thinking of the way it should have been.
“There were plusses and minuses of both, but the rule is the rule at the moment and that’s the way it will have to be implemented.
“Will it lead to more frees? Probably. That leads to a different conversation that the referee’s not involved in.”
The referees, as The Irish News understands it, weren’t included in the decision to change the advantage rule.
Yet they’ll be the ones left to sweep it up in the summertime.
Consider what it’s like to be an ambitious man in black, with hopes of a big game or two down the line.
Your natural inclination is to let the game go. It’s what you want to do, it’s what the players want you to do, it’s what the supporters want you to do.
But if you do it, you’re going to be hauled across the coals in Croke Park because you didn’t abide by the rules.
Put yourself in their shoes. Do you go off and paddle your own canoe? Because if you do, that’s probably the only canoe you’ll be paddling for the rest of the year.
The same principle applies to the introduction of a new rule that governs the denial of goalscoring opportunities. It brings Gaelic football and hurling into line with most forward-thinking sports that wish to reward attacking play.
The problem is not the introduction of the rule. It was badly needed.
The problem is that it doesn’t go far enough. Within its constraints lie obvious problems.
There are two very obvious issues that will ultimately come back on referees later in the year. If they apply the rules as they’re supposed to, they will be pilloried from every corner.
A player going through on goal can be pulled back and stopped without the concession of a penalty, no matter how cynically it is done.
They can, in fact, have their head half taken off. A red card offence remains a red card offence but outside the large rectangle, it won’t be a penalty even if it denies the clearest of goalscoring opportunities.
And then there’s the issue of where it happens. Referees have been told to pay particular attention to where on the field incidents occur.
If a man is dragged out by the corner flag and it’s a black card offence, that would still be a penalty despite the lack of a clear goalscoring opportunity.
Yet if a man coming charging through on his own to make a one-on-one is dragged down a yard outside the 21’ or the ‘D’, that would not result in a penalty.
The rule as it’s written allows so much less scope for the referee to determine what is a goalscoring opportunity and what isn’t.
It’s not so much a goalscoring chance as a cynical foul in the wrong area.
The rules as they’re written display an inherent lack of trust in referees to be able to judge situations and play the game accordingly.
But it won’t be those that wrote them or voted for them at Congress who will be taking the hammering on social media come the Ulster final.
It will be the referee who knows what the right decision is, but doesn’t have the freedom to make it because the rules are so prescriptive.
The men applying the rules on a Sunday are being hung out to dry.
