Mulvihill favours umpire screening

Gaelic Games:  Director general Liam Mulvihill has said that the GAA needed to look at the training and credentials of match umpires. He was responding to the controversy surrounding last weekend's Leinster club hurling final in which one of the "scores" in James Stephens' one-point win over UCD has been shown to have actually been a wide.

Mulvihill said that greater training of match officials would have to be considered. "A lot of the umpires that are used in club games could do with more training. It has been commented that our experience in International Rules with the AFL is they use very young officials as their goal umpires. They're very well trained as well. There's a discipline about them and because they're younger there's a fair chance they have better eyesight.

"We were talking here today about screening. Maybe we should be screening umpires' eyesight because it could happen that a person who's an umpire could have very poor eyesight and it's not picked up under our present regulations.

"But in that specific case (last Sunday's match) the umpire was perfectly positioned as was clear from the photographs. He was standing well back behind the upright and couldn't have been standing in a better position."

He pointed out that whereas the issue of umpiring standards in the intercounty arena was being tackled by the creation of intercounty umpiring panels, eliminating score-related controversies completely would be impossible.

"The other aspect is whether a referee should be allowed to choose his own umpires. In general he does and that does lead to a referee being reluctant to drop someone who might be a neighbour. But for the major games in Croke Park we have appointed umpires and linesmen ourselves but still mistakes are made."

Technology has been playing a growing role in other sports and within the GAA there is ongoing research, under the auspices of Croke Park's Games Section, into methods that could benefit football and hurling.

"There's a research group in NUI Galway looking at the possibility of placing microchips in the ball but so far it hasn't been possible to devise an effective system."

On a lower-tech level, a motion to last April's congress proposed another way of addressing the problem. "Leitrim suggested a net over the posts as well as the bar," said Mulvihill. "That went to the games development people for consideration."

He reiterated the reluctance of the GAA to accede to the restaging of fixtures in which invalid scores have been allowed - either by order of the match committee or on the basis of an offer made by the winning team.

"I think everyone would be slow to order rematches. All sports organisations would be because if you don't accept the decisions of match officials on the spot you're going to have chaos.

"In the early years of the GAA the referee's report was not final and he gave his report to the committee in charge of the game and they considered his report. Inevitably there was then a committee room game as the losing team sought to find a flaw. It was because of that the rule was changed to make the referee's report final and nearly all sports have that now."

Deadly scoring duo Ivan McCarthy and Rory O'Doherty, provided the platform for UCC to beat the fog and Limerick Institute of Technology by 1-17 to 2-7 in the semi-finals of the Higher Eduction Hurling League, at the LIT grounds.

UCC: R O'Neill; D Coady, D McSweeney, R McCarthy; E Hanley, R Flannery, S O'Neill; K Hartnett, T Walsh; S O'Sullivan (0-2), M O'Connor, I McCarthy (0-8), R O'Brien (0-1), R O'Doherty (1-3), P O'Brien (0-3).

LIT: A Ryan; C O'Mahony, J Coen, E Collins; D Morrissey (0-1), F Flynn, H Hayes; J Clancy (0-1), S Tierney; B Nugent, I Tiernan, A Callinan; C Early (0-1), E Kelly (2-4), D O'Reilly. Sub: E Fenton for O'Reilly.

Referee: J McDonnell (Tipperary).