Correct decision?

By Landan Seamy

Local spy Sean McGrinny suspects that the anti northern bias in the GAA is even more entrenched than he had previously suspected.

“I heard that RTE is looking for ideas for new programmes to air during the championship season this year so as work in my line tends to be quite slack during Lent when people go off the beer I came up with an idea and decided to research it.

“My idea was to do a programme a bit like the part of Question of Sport when they ask what happens next. I recorded some matches and then looked out for fouls. I would pause the play as soon as I spotted one with the intention of asking “What will the referee do next?”

“When I spotted a Dublin, Kerry or Mayo hallion infringing the rules of our national sport I would pause the video with the intention of jotting down which of the four options the referee would go for:

(a) free with no card

(b) yellow card

(c) black card

(d) red card.

“To my dismay, however, half the time the cynical southern ref would just ignore it and that wasn’t even one of the options. This totally spoiled my idea but having 5 options on the screen would look too messy.

“I also noticed that any time a northern player accidentally infringed the rules there would be a certain black card so again that doesn’t help my programme for it became too easy to predict. The programme would end up going like this:

“Sean Cavanagh accidentally touches some Free Stater. What will the referee do next?”

“Issue a black card”

“Correct”.

“Some people may think I’m biased but that’s wrong. Take the Tipperary and Derry match last summer. I looked at it again and Tipperary got far more frees than Derry and I’m saying that as a Tyrone man who has as healthy a dislike of Derry ones as any of my neighbours.

Sean’s wife Kate, who has asked to remain anonymous, has said that she thinks her husband is on to something but suggests that he has not quite hit the nail on the head this time.

She has looked at the videos too and has noticed that it is just the most handsome players that are treated harshly by the referees.

“Of course it is correct to say that lots of cards are issued to players like Sean Cavanagh, Tiernan McCann, Mark Bradley etc” she said. “Strictly speaking however” she continued “The reason why a disproportionate amount of northern players are getting the cards is just that most of the handsome players come from up here.”