Refereeing standards yet again raise their unloved head. Even if we accept that Mick O'Dwyer's notion of a quota of frees within the 45-metre line for every team is a bit fanciful, the issue still won't go away, writes Seán Moran

Limerick captain Mark Foley dealt with the problem succinctly: you get all these great hurling occasions and yet afterwards everyone is talking about the referee.

Foley's team-mate Steve McDonagh also got to the heart of a different aspect. It's an impossible job and why would anyone want to do it? Referees are as amateur as the players and yet they attract almost ritual abuse from team officials after matches - regardless of performance. The same officials are frequently tetchy in the extreme about even mild criticism directed at their teams, but with referees the gloves are off.

Media plays a role as well. Newspaper reports are less influential than the unforgiving eye of the camera, which highlights nearly every error of perception or application, but are equally a forum for public criticism.

Whereas refereeing mistakes are intolerably hard for teams to suffer, the fact is that any system of human arbitration is not 100 per cent reliable. Given that even limited high-tech assistance is only practicable at elite levels there is no alternative for the vast majority of fixtures in all team sports.

Just over a week ago Offaly had a right to feel aggrieved about Laois's late goal in the drawn match, which appeared to have been created by a thrown hand pass. Teams know that scores won't be reviewed and results changed in the committee room, and that is as it should be.

Discipline is a different matter altogether. Video evidence is admissible not because the GAC wants to interfere with a match but because it wants to uphold order and curtail foul play.

Yet aside from such broad principles, refereeing has become a problem, particularly in hurling. It's worth making the distinction, because some years back Football Men, the generally obscure and less vocal cousins of Hurling Men, used to complain that there was too much focus on football's disciplinary problems as opposed to hurling's.

The response was - reasonably - that there weren't such problems in hurling. Lately all that's been reversed. Football isn't perfect or near it, but it doesn't seem to throw up such relentless controversy.

There are frequent red cards, but it's hard to disagree with the vast preponderance of them. Most of the committee room escapes have also been by hurlers - all of which means there's a greater certainty of justice being done in football matches.

Criticism of Dublin referee Aodhan MacSuibhne and Carlow's Pat Aherne over their handling of the most recent Munster hurling matches has been plentiful. Not all of it has been well judged. Decrying referees because they come from unsuccessful counties is nonsensical. A referee's job is to apply the rules, without favour.

In the past, Wicklow, not a headline act in either code, has provided high-profile referees, including Jimmy Hatton who took charge of both hurling and football All-Irelands. Tipperary's John Moloney emulated that feat and was regarded as the best football referee of his generation, although his county have not been a successful county in the code for decades.

The late John Dowling, a former GAA president, was another referee with All-Irelands in both hurling and football under his belt. Yet at the time the hurling status of his county, Offaly, wasn't much different from Carlow's or certainly Dublin's nowadays.

Even the more moderate criticism that any referee from outside Munster would find it difficult to adapt to the culture of the game is flawed. There is one set of playing rules, not a collection of provincial editions.

So any criticism of MacSuibhne and Aherne has to be by the standards of the job they do rather than what county they represent. By that criterion both have been lacking. Put simply, their decisions have been too permissive. If foul play isn't - or is only grudgingly - punished it spreads uncertainty among players.

In that context, hurlers from both Limerick and Waterford kept their heads quite impressively as authority broke down on Sunday. Clare and Tipperary were not as disciplined in their match, but the mitigating plea from both camps that MacSuibhne's failure to crack down early created a lawless environment - although self-serving - is undeniable.

Aherne wasn't helped by his umpires whom he twice had to overrule. Plans have been afoot for a while to train a corps of independent umpires, whose qualifications extend beyond a long-standing acquaintance with the match referee.

But the central referees appointments committee must share the blame. If referees won't apply the rules, they shouldn't get matches. The permissiveness of Aherne and MacSuibhne is not a sudden phenomenon, and surely if a Leinster referee is preferred for Munster matches Pat Horan should be top of the list.

It's up to the national referees' committee to impress on match officials that they must apply the rules, not some minimalist impression of them. If that doesn't work, referees shouldn't be used for a spell - as happened MacSuibhne three years ago, and even in 2001 to Dickie Murphy, who remains one of the best referees.

Long term there are problems ahead. With so few hurling referees available, there is no rising generation to relieve the pressure. The authorities have to keep trying new appointments to blood potential referees, but at the moment there are more urgent priorities.

The crisis of confidence in refereeing requires the best officials appointed to the main events, regardless of their provenance.