Referees can end up being centre stage in All-Ireland finals

The 1983 All-Ireland football final between Dublin and Galway was played in the kind of winds that knock slates off a roof.

There were two pieces of extraordinary skill in the match. In the 11th minute, Barney Rock – father of current Dublin star, Dean Rock – collected a mishit kickout and lobbed Galway’s goalkeeper from 35 yards for the game’s decisive goal.

In the second half, Dublin’s Tommy Drumm collected the ball amongst a scrum of players on his half-back line and, while sprinting forwards with the ball, launched a dropkick down the pitch. It flew like a slingshot over the Galway full-back line into Joe McNally’s breadbasket. He knocked it over for a precious point, which helped inch 12-man Dublin towards a 1-10 to 1-8 victory.

The wind and sodden footing made it an almost impossible match for Antrim’s John Gough to referee. He spent the afternoon firefighting. He sent off three of Dublin’s players and one from Galway, Tomás Tierney, which was a record haul for an All-Ireland final.

Sent off

Twenty-seven minutes into the first half, Brian Mullins walked for clocking Brian Talty. Ray Hazley and Tierney were sent off a few minutes later for a set-to under the Hogan Stand and in the second half Kieran Duff got the line for kicking Pat O’Neill’s head with his boot, as the Galway man lay on the ground.

It’s a game Gough is reminded about all the time.

“It was the sort of day you don’t want on All-Ireland final day,” he says. “The weather determines how a game is going to turn out. That day the mixture of a very strong wind and rain meant the ball holding in the air, players getting underneath lots of players, slippery surface and all the rest.”

Gough saw the indiscretions that led to the sendings-off clearly. He had to make all the calls on his own.

“There was no communication between the linesmen and me that day,” he says. “Consultation between a referee and his linesmen and umpires came about years later.”

He says the notorious incident in the tunnel at half-time when Talty got pucked in the face escaped his attention, a punch that occasioned a series of disciplinary hearings into the long winter months to find out who gave the midfielder a black eye.

‘Tough match’

“I knew little about what happened before they came out onto the pitch [for the second half]. It was only afterwards I heard press reports of what happened in the tunnel. I was totally unaware.

“Normally it wouldn’t come into my reckoning anyway – I deal with what happens on the pitch.

“It was a tough match but I was as fit as hell. I was fortunate I had a son who was an athlete who ran for Ireland and I trained with him. It didn’t bother me.

“In Ulster, I got all the tough matches. I was close to everything that happened. I knew what was happening. I’d already had words with a few of the players.

“Some people feel very hard about what happened that day. Brian Mullins to this day I think feels very aggrieved about it. He’s never spoken to me. I’ve spoken to all the rest of them. At the various functions, they’ve all come over to me, but Brian Mullins never. I regret that.

“The Dublin captain Tommy Drumm, his reactions at all times, during the game and afterwards, were exemplary. And there was never any question about sending off Kieran Duff. I seen exactly what he did. I duly walked him. There was no reaction. At the function afterwards, he came over and shook hands. It was totally forgotten. I do regret that Brian Mullins took it so badly.”

Paddy Russell from Emly, Co Tipperary, had to send off players in both his All-Ireland finals.

In 1990, Cork’s Colm O’Neill got his marching orders for a foolhardy blow to the gob of Meath enforcer, Mick Lyons. In 1995, Russell sent off Dublin’s Charlie Redmond. Twice. It was in the days before red cards were brandished.

“The cards came in after ‘Charlie Redmond’,” says Russell. “What happened was Charlie and Tyrone’s Fergal Logan got involved and were rolling around. Charlie struck yer man [with an attempted head butt]. I sent Charlie off. I pointed to the line to indicate he was off but it happened so close to the dugout where the Dublin mentors were, and there were a lot of them [encroaching] in on the field. There was so much confusion. People didn’t know if I had sent him off or not.

“I threw in the ball and play went down the field. As it was coming back up the field I spotted number 13. I spotted Charlie on the field. I let play go until a break in play.

‘My linesman’

“Once play stopped I went over to my linesman who was Willie O’Mahony and said to him, ‘Did Charlie Redmond go off?’. He said: ‘He did.’ I said: ‘Number 13 is still on the field.’ And he looked over and he said: ‘Jesus, Paddy, he is.’ So I go over to Charlie again and I said: ‘You’re off.’ He said: ‘Paddy, please don’t send me off. It’s my last game.’ I said: ‘I can’t do anything about it.’ ”

All-Ireland referees these days are rigged up to microphones that keep them in tune with their linesmen and umpires over the airwaves.

They work year in year out with the same set of umpires who will likely come from their own club or hinterland.

Cavan’s Joe McQuillan, who refereed the 2011 and 2013 finals and will be a linesman for Sunday’s clash between Dublin and Kerry, worked with the same four umpires for the last decade, only changing one of their number this year due to retirement.

If the umpires want to alert the ref to a player or incident, they press a button and relay their message. The ref talks freely throughout.

He might have 500 decisions to make in a game, says Maurice Deegan, who took charge of the 2008 and 2012 All-Ireland finals.

One moment in particular stands out from the 2008 final, which pitted the decade’s two dominant forces against each other: Tyrone v Kerry. Kerry led by a point at half-time. The game was in the melting pot until the last few minutes when Tyrone pulled away with three quick points to seal a win.

A play straight after the half-time break proved crucial. Tyrone worked the ball downfield after the throw in, shovelling the ball over Kerry’s full-back line into the hands of substitute Kevin Hughes.

Slight push

“I remember the Tyrone player was running in on goal and was just about to take a shot,” says Deegan. “There was a slight push on his back. I said, will I blow for a free here or will I let it go? I let it go and the ball went into the corner of the net [from a rebound].

“The advantage worked out for me. You have to go with your instincts. You’re trying to keep calm. You’re in the middle of 82,000 people. You’re trying to keep the players calm. There’s a lot more to referring the match then meets the eye.”

One All-Ireland final

Two brothers sent off

The narrator of a Pathe segment on the 1965 All-Ireland football final between Galway and Kerry concluded that Gaelic football “is an essentially Irish sport in which woman’s role is to watch”.

The match referee, Dr Mick Loftus, who later served as GAA president, had a busy watch that afternoon. Until that year’s final, only two players had ever been sent off in an All-Ireland football final – an unidentified Dublin footballer in the 1908 final and Cavan’s Joe Strafford in 1943. Loftus sent off three players during one hour.

“There’s a bit of a scrap between Galway and Kerry,” said the Pathe reporter. “Derry O’Shea is fouled by Galway’s John Donnellan. Not a private fight so the referee joins in and sends both men off the field.”

O’Shea’s brother, John “Thorny” O’Shea, was the third man to be sent off that day.

How much time is left?

Mayo not so free and easy

Towards the end of the 2013 All-Ireland final, Mayo trailed Dublin by two points. The western men were awarded a free close to Dublin’s goal. Their free-taker, Cillian O’Connor, was in a bind. Did Mayo have enough time to take the point and work an equalising point from the kick out or was a possible goal the last throw of the dice?

“He took a long time to kick it. Let’s put it that way,” says the match referee Joe McQuillan. “He said: ‘How long was left?’ I said: ‘30 seconds.’ But, as the man says, ‘the meter was running’. He looked and he twisted and he turned. He wondered what he’d do with it. He wasn’t getting any guidance from the sideline. He eventually kicked it over the bar by which time the 30 seconds was gone. At the time, people were trying to say ‘there was 30 seconds from the kick-out’ but I never said that. Croke Park confirmed that afterwards, and Cillian admitted he made a mistake.”