CHRIS CONWAY ON…

USING A SECOND REFEREE

‘There is no person in GAA that wouldn’t prefer a return to more open games with a lot more kicking. You talk about them having to limit the handpass or when a team goes past the halfway line or the opposition 45 that the ball can’t come back. Things like that possibly might advantage the situation but the only issue is that it probably requires a second referee for a lot of these things that they might be trying to bring in. Because certain rules have come in already which involve a lot more being required of referees the last number of years.

‘The physical side of things has been completely taken out of it to the detriment of the game. You look at [David] Clifford’s perfect shoulder this year – as big a hit that it was – and he gets a yellow card for it. Because the physicality has been taken out of the game, players are slow to even press up or properly engage in terms of getting shoulders in or tackles in.

‘I definitely prefer to see the referees use a bit more common sense like they seem to be able to do in the hurling. A lot of the tweaks to the rules of the game that are being looked at would probably require a second referee to monitor.

‘That’s where the linesmen would have to come into play a lot more, particularly with the ball maybe progressing over certain lines.

‘Even within Laois though they’re struggling to get referees signed up, quality referees. Full rounds of fixtures at juvenile haven’t been played off because they’re struggling to assign referees.’

PAYING MANAGERS PROPERLY

‘The hours that go into it are huge.

From the commitment side of things I wouldn’t have any issue – I would generally be on the sideline somewhere most days or evenings of the week!

‘People who are fully immersed in the GAA, they do it for the love of the game rather than anything monetary.

‘But certainly the hours that go into it, as Jack alluded to, it’s a second job, 40-50 hours a week when you take in the training, the matches, the analysis, the phone calls plus an awful lot of travel that goes with it.

‘It’s probably something that the GAA must look at rather than just brushing it under the carpet because what you’re seeing now at the moment is that lots are getting well remunerated at club level where there is less pressure on them and possibly as much if not more money for less hours.

‘If they could formalise it in terms of where people could be remunerated properly, be it for childcare, mobile phone expenses, travelling expenses, loss of earnings in terms of their main job for certain hours here or there.

‘Realistically it’s probably the only way. Even for clubs, you have rising insurance costs throughout the year.

‘There is no point ignoring the elephant in the room.’