The inconsistency of refereeing decisions and the recent high profile dismissals of Diarmuid Connolly and Sean Cavanagh has led to a lot of frustration among managers, players and supporters throughout the season and kept the topic to the forefront of the media.
Dublin manager Jim Gavin believes that frustration would lesson if there was more direct communication between referees and intercounty managers and Gavin also believes the game would benefit from pre-match meetings with officials.
Unlike many other sports there is no dialogue allowed even informally between managers and referees, in Rugby for example 48hrs before a test match coaches have a meeting with the match officials and speaking to the Irish Times, Gavin said you can see how much the officiating in that sport has improved because of that.
“I think you can see the levels of officiating has really improved over the last number of seasons. That’s obviously because they have dialogue with themselves. There is obviously a culture where they are reviewing tape and trying to improve all the time.
“You couldn’t but be impressed by them but I think there certainly is scope for more briefing in our games, just to explain. Just to make the game more consistent. I think managers and supporters just want more consistency.
“To that end, I think they could benefit from players’ feedback and managers’ feedback, as much as their own network.
Gavin thinks that it would be no harm for the GAA in the long term to put in plans either for pre-season or at the end of the NFL or provincial series to have such meetings and seek opinions and feedback.
“We would talk an awful lot to our high-level referees within Dublin to get their opinion of how they see things going said Gavin.
“Seán Walsh from Kerry is head of the referees committee and he is very progressive and I’m sure he might have a few ideas on that.”
Gavin has a good point, it would do no harm at all to have these meetings between officials and managers and would be of a benefit to both the game and the officials and may even make the referees job a little easier and reduce the frustration at least from the sideline.