A GREEN CARD TO WORK

TOP football referee David Gough favours the introduction of a green card – to punish those who abuse match officials.

Last year’s drawn All-ireland final ref (left) borrowed the idea from hockey and reckons it would be ‘fantastic’ in Gaelic games.

He told the Ball Talk podcast: “In hockey, if management abuse the match official from the sideline, shout in any sort of abuse or openly disagree with the decision, the referee calls the captain over and produces a green card. The captain is automatically sent off to a sin-bin for two minutes because of the behaviour of the management team member. It’s absolutely fantastic.

“It happened once, when I saw it, and it just cut out all sorts of abuse coming from the sideline because the team were down what was perceived to be the most valuable player on the team.”