Gaelic Games

Pat Ryan says All-Ireland finals should go straight to replay, not to extra time

Cork manager says extra time becomes a lottery due to players going down injured

Cork manager Pat Ryan. Photograph: Bryan Keane/Inpho
Cork manager Pat Ryan. Photograph: Bryan Keane/Inpho
Gordon Manning
Mon Jul 22 2024 - 18:11

Pat Ryan believes the GAA should reconsider the use of extra time as a mechanism to decide drawn All-Ireland finals.

There has been a significant debate over the last 24 hours on the provision of extra-time for All-Ireland deciders.

“Look, to be honest with you, I didn’t want to get into it during the week but there should always be a replay in an All-Ireland final,” said the Cork manager at the team hotel in Ballsbridge on Monday morning.

“Even from the commercial side of things, even from the personal side of things, to have a replay.

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“It becomes a lottery [going straight into extra-time]. We had fellas going down injured, we lost players during the game, Clare lost players – Shane O’Donnell went off, Peter Duggan went off.

“We lost Rob Downey, we lost Seamus Harnedy and Niall O’Leary. It’s just a bit of a lottery. A replay would be the fairest but look they were the rules coming into it, we had planned for it, we had spoken about it.

“Going forward, I think it’s a thing that the GAA should change.”

Ryan has been gracious in defeat since Sunday and has opted against leaning on the crutch of refereeing decisions as a contributing factor to the outcome of hurling’s 2024 showpiece event.

“Clare will probably look at some of the decisions as well. When you lose, your ones are always magnified,” added Ryan.

“There’s no point complaining about it, we’ll just have to move on. We probably didn’t do one or two things that we wanted to do that came against us and we can’t look at that any more than any refereeing decisions.

“We’d be proud of the lads. They tried to wear the jersey properly and they did that yesterday. In fairness to Clare, they probably just about deserved their victory.”

The provisional fixture list for next year’s championship has Cork going to Ennis to face Clare in their Munster SHC opener.

“Hopefully, they’ll celebrate for a good few months,” smiled Ryan. “That would be our encouragement, to celebrate it into February and March!

“We’ll take a couple of weeks’ off now and reassess it. Lads go back to the clubs and the games will be starting in the next two weeks. It will be part of our job to find new players that will make things even more competitive.

“We had a very good under-20 squad last year so our idea would be to try and find three or four new players. Obviously, every panel changes every year so it’s just trying to find an extra couple of fellas who can provide us with something more.”

Gordon Manning

Gordon Manning

Gordon Manning is a sports journalist, specialising in Gaelic games, with The Irish Times