SIDELINE CUT:Kildare were let down by the make-it-up-as-we-go-along tradition in Gaelic football, and the referee was equally left in a tough position because of that system, writes KEITH DUGGAN

SIT IS ancient history now but what happened on a basketball court in Utah some 13 years ago still serves as the perfect example of the imperfections that characterise officiating in sport. It comes to mind every time there is yet another daft and inconclusive row about the inadequacies of refereeing in the All-Ireland football championship.

Game Six of that year’s NBA finals will always revolve around “the shot”: Michael Jordan’s deathless crossover jump shot with five seconds left on the clock which broke the resistance of the Utah Jazz and gave Chicago – and their number 23 – a sixth NBA title. The more you see of old Jordan footage – the grace and wolfishness of the man – the more it seems like he is bound to leave all other contenders in his wake when it comes to the argument over the pre-eminent athlete of the 20th Century.

What he did and how he did it bordered on the impossible. But if that shot is remembered – a famous wide-frame photograph taken from behind Jordan catches the expression on the faces of hundreds of fans while the ball is still travelling through the air on the way to the basket. Hundreds of horrified citizens from the Mormon state and a lone youngster from Chicago who has his arms raised in triumph because he knew that the shot would be good before it went in – already forgotten are two equally critical shots that preceded it.

Earlier in the quarter, Jordan’s team-mate Ron Harper launched a desperate shot trying to beat the 24-second clock, which is the maximum a team can keep possession without shooting the ball. Slow motion showed that the shot had not left his hand by the time the shot clock expired. But the referees signalled that the shot was good. Earlier in the half, Utah’s Howard Eisley had fired a similar three-point shot with time running out: replays clearly showed he had managed to release the ball on time and that the shot was valid. But the referees cancelled it out.

Those two decisions meant a five-point swing in one of the most famous basketball games of all time which finished 87-86. Reverse those decisions and Utah win. The referees’ decisions, in other words, arguably slanted the outcome of the game. And basketball is a very precisely regulated sport: the rules are clear and because the sport uses two officials to regulate a small area of play – one covering the baseline, one the front court so that between them they get 365 degree perspective on the play – they miss little.

In addition, there is a dedicated timekeeper and another official to keep a scoresheet scoring sequence, scorers, timeouts, personal fouls, etc. And this isn’t just in the NBA: this is right down to the most basic level of the game in every country in the world.

Think about that in relation to the lot of the top referees in the All-Ireland football championship. Lone officials expected to cover an entire football pitch, to assess the fairness of play of 30 players pumped on adrenaline and the expectations of the crowd. In addition, he is expected to keep time and to keep note of the score.

When he is alerted about an off-the-ball incident by his linesmen or umpires, he has to run around the field searching for the guilty party, an often farcical exercise. Then he has to produce and brandish yellow/red cards. Then he has to try to ignore the inevitable reaction of the crowd, for whom the referee is habitually both a figure of fun and a figure of wrath. Given this workload, the referee’s job is almost impossible.

But the referee faces another disadvantage, which is much more serious: there are no rules in Gaelic football. Or, rather, there are rules but they are never consistently applied.

For instance, players take more than the allowed four steps all the time (particularly when scoring goals, as if the dazzling sight of the ball making the net billow renders steps taken irrelevant). Players foul each other all the time.

The shoulder tackle is almost impossible to execute cleanly and even when players do manage it, they are whistled for a foul. When players take a shot from a free from the hands, where they kick the ball after their “run-in” is almost never where the foul occurred: they habitually steal a few yards.

The hand pass has become so open to interpretation that players have begun to seek counselling about it; players complain and bitch about every call all the time; players body-check opponents off the ball all the time; players mouth to linesmen all the time; players push and shove each other once the ball goes over the sideline all the time; defenders hold onto defenders shirts all the time. Everyone is trying to get away with it, in other words, all the time. The referee in a Gaelic football match is like a man tasked with regulating bartering at a street market in downtown Istanbul. He can’t win.

But the reason why Kildare and Kieran McGeeney felt so aggrieved and cheated after last Sunday was precisely because that foul on Dublin’s Bernard Brogan was something that players get away with all the time. Brogan didn’t even have the ball in his hand – there is an unspoken understanding in Gaelic games that in a big absorbing summer game that looks destined to end in a draw, a foul has to be fairly blatant before it will be called. It was a subtle foul. (But Brogan was correct in his midweek assertion – it was a foul).

The howls of indignation from Kevin McStay in the RTÉ commentary box echoed those all around the country. Then McStay asked the question which many thousand Kildare men and women probably phrased less delicately: “How could you call a foul at 14-all with seconds left in the game?”

(This was the second best rhetorical question of the weekend. First place went to Séamus “Banty” McEnaney who, standing pitch side on a dismal evening in Cavan town – You can almost hear Jack Nicholson drawl “Is there any other kind?” – asked aloud, “20,000 people in Breffni Park . . . where else in the world would you want to be?” Tahiti, Hawaii were the first places that came to mind but when you think about it, the list is all but endless).

The fact McStay’s question sounded so reasonable pinpointed the problem with Gaelic football. A foul is a foul. It doesn’t matter whether there is a few seconds left or a few seconds gone. Until everyone involved with Gaelic football accepts that, there will always be problems.

There was a hue and cry over that incident because the foul on Brogan happens more or less every time every attacking player makes a run. Kildare’s grievance is based on the fact that these minor indiscretions are let go all the time. So it was a sickening way to be knocked out of the Leinster championship.

Kildare were let down by the make-it-up-as-we-go-along tradition in Gaelic football. The referee, Cormac Reilly, was equally left in a tough position because of that system. Had he turned a blind eye and whistled a draw, there would be knowing chuckles all around and everyone would be happy. And the problem would stay there.

The problem is not about the refereeing, it is about the rules. Hate the game, not the play-ah, as Chris Rock once said – although not about the championship. The GAA needs to decide which rules are worth enforcing consistently in Gaelic football and it needs to ditch the rest.

Then they have to become definite and precise about enforcing those rules.

They owe it to the players and the officials.

But most of all, they owe it to the game.