GAA referees can be forgiven for being lax with clock

I already have a financial interest in the All-Ireland Football Final – 11/1 the draw. Considering there's probably a market on the speed of Aidan O'Shea's stubble growth for in-play virtuosos, it is an old-school bet. But even in a high-tech USP-branded GAA world, some things remain painfully old school.

And I’m basically betting on the painful vulnerability of the man in the middle this Sunday.

It would be easy to cloak it in supposed analysis, replete with stats, trends and facts. After all, it is 16 year since the last football final replay. The hurling guys haven’t been able to stop drawing finals recently so the football is due.

And when you think about it, there isn't much between Dublin and Mayo, only a kick of a ball really, and the Dubs peaked against Kerry, and Tipperary showed in the hurling how important it can be to come in with something to prove: except no amount of supposed facts disguise the truth behind any bet – it's a hunch.

Betting the draw is a hunch that has served Gaelic games punters well down the ages for the very simple reason that referees are human too.

This may be news to those smooth-talking Kerry people who gave David Gough a vivid display of their poetic impulses after the Kingdom's semi-final loss to Dublin.

Or to the morons who recently kicked an off-duty Garda into hospital as he helped escort a referee off a pitch in Sligo, – supporters of the WINNING team, no less, whe were apparently still peeved the ref had played too much extra-time.

Old questions

Such incidents provoke old questions about why GAA referees voluntarily put themselves in such a position in the first place. Officially it’s about volunteerism at its best, but it remains a mystery to a lot of us, a bit like wanting to join the army and spend your adult life being ordered around: is the ambition to ultimately get to do the ordering?

Anyway, whatever the motivation we should be grateful so many refs are prepared to put themselves in the firing line. And since those prepared to do it are by definition immersed in the games, they must know too that even amongst the vast range of GAA rituals none remains as resilient as the knowing collective nod that comes when a game is close with 10 minutes to go.

More money

It doesn’t matter if you’re among 80,000 in Croke Park or stretched in front of screen in Sydney, the same thought simultaneously occurs to everyone at the same time – draw, replay, more money, typical, f**kers.

Facts may or may not statistically back up whether or not refs play fast and loose with the clock when blowing the whistle on a stalemate.

But the truth is everyone believes they do. And I don’t care how impervious any referee’s psyche is required to be towards such diversionary detail; that realisation must percolate in.

So maybe sometimes there’s an indulgent human impulse towards one final crack that may or may not be strictly accurate, maybe give a side a last chance to gather a kick-out and fling a desperate final throw of the dice that, you never know, might even things up.

In fact, if it’s expected, maybe even demanded, that a team gets a fair go, you’d want to be a real whistling hard-ass not to let things go a little more, give the losers most of the 50-50 calls, accidentally on purpose look the other way if the other side’s hard man suddenly gets a belt of a fist, much less blow time exactly on the button.

It’s not like you’re going to get flak from any county board Gael with replay stars in their eyes. And if the ref’s lot is abuse anyway it might as well be within a scenario in which no one actually loses. If idiots are prepared to attack refs even when they win, what’s another minute here or there, especially since no one seems to want to be hidebound to precision anyway.

Split-second decisions

That much is obvious, as obvious as the solution to all intercounty time-keeping controversies.

The idea that referees frantically running around for 70 minutes, making split-second decisions, juggling three shades of card and enduring the kind of abuse that would make a toilet-seat blush might also be atomic in their timekeeping is ludicrous.

Yet tentative attempts at using the hooter system were quickly binned last year on pretexts of concerns about transparency and teams running down the clock: translated, pliability is preferable to precision. And if that suits, then fair enough.

But it can hardly suit referees that even such a straightforward measure which might make their lives a little easier, and deflect some of the heat directed their way, hasn’t even been entertained.

GAA referees have an impossible job, under the microscope in terms of standards and fitness, hares for those pundits coursing their opinions through public prejudices. Volunteerism is all very well but even the most masochistic can eventually come to the conclusion that it mightn’t be worth the hassle.

It’s not like GAA refs even get to preen like their rugby brethren. They’re not paid like the top soccer guys. Quite often it seems their only goal is survival, and if that requires a certain flexibility with the watch who could blame them.

There’s every chance Sunday’s final is going to be tense and tight throughout. Those involved will be less than human not to feel it, and that includes officials. So if it’s close with 10 minutes to go, the same thought will go through everyone’s head, no matter who they are – draw, replay, more money, typical, f**kers.

Bet it like you stole it!