Underclass see red and yellow plot

Statistics show that if you're playing for one of the less successful football counties, you're about one and three-quarter times more likely to suffer refereeing sanction than your equivalent with one of the more successful teams. This finding emerges after the weekend's events at the Cavan-Derry Ulster championship match.

The frantic activity by referee Brian White at Breffni Park over the weekend recalled the start of last year's football championship in Mullingar when 20 cards were shown by Niall Barrett to the players of Westmeath and Carlow. White showed 16 yellow cards to Derry and Cavan players and sent off Cavan's Fintan Cahill.

Barrett's controversial actions were the subject of various objections and appeals last year as there had been confusion over the rules he had been instructed to apply.

This year's championship was preceded by calls from the counties in Leinster's preiminary pool not to use them as guinea pigs for disciplinary crackdowns. Such concerns were based on the perception that Barrett's performance was symptomatic of all GAA disciplinary crusades in that it penalised the smaller counties at the start of the season before going on to treat the major powers more leniently as the summer progressed.

An analysis of last year's yellow and red cards demonstrates that there is some validity in these concerns. For the purposes of the survey the competing counties were divided into `stronger' and `weaker' sections. The criteria for this categorising were simply the first and second divisions of the National Football League.

This has reasonable championship relevance as all the top-level teams with the exception of Donegal, Sligo, Clare and Kildare won their first-round matches last summer (and both Donegal and Sligo went to replays with Armagh and Galway - the first on their way to the Ulster title and the second then defending All-Ireland champions).

The figures show that of the 139 yellow and 14 red cards issued last summer, those shown to players on the weaker teams were vastly disproportionate to the number administered to footballers on stronger teams. The breakdown sees the total for the first-division group at 76 yellows and seven reds whereas the second-division sides picked up 63 and seven respectively.

By treating yellow cards as worth one disciplinary point and translating red cards as two yellows, the total for the first group is 90 and for the second 77. But the first group played nearly twice as many matches as the second. So the average for the former works out at 1.872 per match and for the latter at 3.208.

There may be reasons for these findings other than a refereeing bias. Weaker teams by definition comprise less skilful players. This means that they will be less adept at tackling and more likely to attract the referee's attention. It is also a fact that such teams are more likely to be under pressure in matches and therefore more likely to find themselves in the occasion of sin.

Yet the disparity is considerable and will go some of the way to proving to managers of less successful teams that their players are more likely to be subjected to extreme disciplinary measures than well-known footballers.