Louth v Meath replay?

This incident is sympthomatic of a wider problem in the GAA i.e. unethical coaching.

Firstly, if players are coached to play within the rules, and coaches actively deal with any of their players who dont, then you get less fouls and so less decisions for the referee to make.

The continual foul play that seems to be systemic at intercounty level also impacts on the referees performance in another way. Because a lot of off the ball stuff happens, the referee is more easily distracted and has to keep an eye on off the ball stuff. If he is keeping his eye on off the ball stuff, then he cannot concentrate as much on the action around the ball. You might say that there wasnt any off the ball stuff happening at the time of the incident, but that doesnt mean the referee hasnt been keeping an eye to make sure. In a bad tempered game, a referee can end up concentrating a lot more on the peripheral stuff than the ball. There is also the fatigue factor. Continual ill tempered play throughout a game will take its toll on the referee's concentration.

All this comes back to coaching. The lack of discipline on the field at GAA matches is a reflection on the caliber of people who coach. Good coaches produce clean players.

The point is MrMan the referee couldn't possibly have seen the goal incident. He was so far behind the play. That's why he should have consulted with his umpires.

He should have but he didn't

If we were to trawl every GAA game to find incidents of injustice we would never have a Championship played.

Liamos said:

The point is MrMan the referee couldn't possibly have seen the goal incident. He was so far behind the play. That's why he should have consulted with his umpires.

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I thought he did consult with the umpires and in an case if he thought he saw a legit goal then it stands even if he made a mistake.

MrMan said:

I thought he did consult with the umpires and in an case if he thought he saw a legit goal then it stands even if he made a mistake.

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from what I saw on telly he only spoke to one umpire and it seemed to be to tell him to put the flag up, It certainly wasn't a detailed discussion.

However the ref also has said in his report that he was blowing for a penalty and then when the ball hit the net, he let it stand. A bit of a strange interpretation of the advantage rule and I'm left thinking that he just panicked.

Full marks to JP Rooney of Louth though who has said
- I’m delighted that there’s no replay. It would have been an anti-climax. That’s it, what’s done is done and we will try to forget about it now. It will be hard to get it out of our heads but we were training this evening and there was a big group there again. We’ll look forward to the next game and life goes on. When you see what happened in Donegal over the weekend, it puts everything into perspective. That was a real tragedy.

I like this Longford joke as well (Longford won the minors)

-Non-Longford Person trying to make conversation with a Longford fan after the Louth Meath match:

NLP: 'Did you see the whack the referee got? Wasn't that awful?'

Longford fan: 'What whack? Where?!!'

NLP: 'On the pitch, after the match. After the goal that wasn't a goal…'

Longford fan: 'What goal? Where?!!'

NLP: 'During the Louth Meath game – the senior final?'

Longford fan: 'God, was there a second match? I only saw Longford win. After that…. Well, everything's a blur…'

Firefly said:

Anyone hear the Louth-Aid sketch on Gift this morning? Fantastic - try and get it if you can. Instead of "Do they know it's Christmas-time at alllll" it was "Why did he play extra time at alllll".

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Here it is

[broken link removed]

In work someone was passing around a photoshopped picture of certain soccer player's head put on a meath player with the caption:

"Thierry An Mhi"