Leading hurling referee Fergal Horgan has flagged an issue with the wording of the new ‘sin bin’ rule.
Passed at last month’s GAA Congress on a trial basis for the 2021 inter-county season, the rule will see a penalty awarded for a number of specified cynical offences which take place inside the ‘D’ or 20-metre line, while the offending player will have to leave the field for 10 minutes.
Imposing those sanctions will depend on whether there is a goalscoring opportunity but Horgan, who reffed the All-Ireland finals of 2017 and last year, says “that is an issue I would have with the wording of it”.
Speaking to the Premierview Tipperary Hurling Podcast, Horgan said that any cynical offence in that area of the field should be punishable with a penalty and sin bin rather than being tied to certain criteria such as how many opposition players are between the attacking player and the goal.
“In my opinion, if a player is pulled down inside the 20-metre line or the semi-circle by a defender, it must be a goal-scoring opportunity if the defender deems he needs to do that.
“I am hoping that referees at inter-county level will go down the route of giving a penalty and a sin-bin when that happens in the majority of cases.”
Although his fellow Tipperary man and chairman of the referees’ committee Willie Barrett outlined four factors that determine a goalscoring opportunity when speaking at Congress, Horgan continued: “It is going to be completely left up to the referee in charge on the day. Croke Park has sent us the rule and we have to look through it. It is going to be trial and error in the National League.
“We definitely need a National League to take place from a refereeing perspective and then we can review things.
“It will be down to the opinion of the referee on the day and it is not going to be easy because some lads will say, ‘There were three lads between him and the goal’ and some will say that is a goal-scoring opportunity and some will say it is not.
“It is going to be up to the referee and we are trying to get together as a body of referees at national level and we will talk about it. I would hope that whatever we do, we will do so uniformly.”
Elsewhere, Horgan, who is a firm fan of Hawk-Eye, would like to see more technology introduced to help referees.
“I don’t like the VAR in the soccer, I think it holds up the game too much. But I do think that there is an avenue for a red card incident that you could review like a rugby match, just for five or 10 seconds. If it’s a game-defining decision, why not get it right?
“The players are training, in a normal year they could have 120/130 training sessions done and seven or eight big games and National League games and I think they deserve at least to have the correct decision and, look, we all get things wrong in a split-second decision and I feel that if that technology is there and it’s on hand, that we should get the maximum out of it.”
He also commented that the handpass is “very hard to police” and called for it to be overhauled.
Horgan added: “I definitely think there is merit in having to change hands to pass the ball. That would be clear and you could not give away a free unless you dropped the hurley while doing it.”
