Brennan frustrated over cards

All-Ireland Club SF Final Replay:GAA president Nickey Brennan has admitted his frustration at the yellow-card controversy surrounding Sunday's All-Ireland club football final replay.

Crossmaglen proved comfortable winners in the end, 0-13 to Dr Crokes' 1-5, yet one of the main talking points afterwards was why referee Eugene Murtagh failed to dismiss Crossmaglen's John McEntee despite showing him two yellow cards.

"I'm as frustrated as anyone that such a situation occurred," said Brennan, who attended Sunday's final in Portlaoise. "Personally I don't think it had any impact on the outcome, but that is not the issue at stake. I would not be happy with it.

"The player (John McEntee) did make a statement indicating that the referee may have said something else. So let us see what is written in the referee's report before we make a definitive conclusion on it. But I will be asking some serious questions of others as to where this thing fell down and if we have to change the way these things happen then let us change them.

"It's disappointing that an incident like this should be the main talking point rather than the game itself. I have no problem with the media highlighting this thing but it takes from the game itself. I also know it's not the first time a player received two yellow cards and remained on the field. We need to find out why this happened."

The referee's report will come before the GAA's Competitions Control Committee this week, although Dr Crokes have already indicated they won't be pursuing any appeal process.

Brennan, however, suggested the incident has highlighted some of the ongoing problems regarding the issuing of yellow cards, and whether the fourth official needs to take an active role in recording such incidents.

"It's still difficult to know when the black book (a warning) is issued," he added. "I know that people have various views on the matter and the purpose of all of this in the first place was to give everyone, including the media, an indication of a decision a referee made so you can follow through on it. There would be a strong body of opinion out there that we should not have the ticking."

Brennan also addressed last Friday's decision to grant the Thomas Davis club a judicial review regarding the Tallaght Stadium being developed as a soccer-only venue: "Clearly the judge felt Thomas Davis seemed to have a very strong case. But it will take time for this to move along to the next stage and I don't expect it will happen immediately. So I think that saga will continue for a while yet."

It didn't, said Brennan, undermine the relationship with the Minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism, John O'Donoghue, and the negotiations regarding a player-welfare grant as proposed by the Gaelic Players Association. "It's important the GAA and myself continue to have a good working relationship with the Minister and that is the way it is. The Minister has been very supportive of many issues we have taken on board and has been very good to us in terms of funding various initiatives and we have other applications in before him.

"Your relationship with anyone at that level is always going to have challenging times - we would have a very strong relationship with the Department of Sport and the senior officials. Life is not always rosy in the garden.

"We would be expecting developments on that player welfare grant pretty soon. Our discussions with the GPA are moving along well and we will be expecting to make announcement on that in the near future, once we nail down a figure."