Players will adapt if Referee's apply the rules

Munster GAA Referees Administrator Johnny Ryan has said there will be a clamp-down on throwing and over-carrying as the inter-county senior hurling championship gets underway this weekend.

By Shane Brophy

The former long-time referee feels there are the two areas that need to be addressed as it will lead to the game being easier to manage overall for referees.

“The message that will be given to referees is the handpass and the overcarrying,” he said, speaking at the launch of the 2024 Munster Championships.

“If you let those technical fouls slip then aggressive fouls might follow as frustration sets in. They (players) all know the rules, of course they try and bend them in their favour but there has to be a huge emphasis that the handpass and overcarrying rules are properly implemented.

“You will always have incidental contact with the hurley, or the helmet rule, we haven’t seen too much of that. Players are taking responsibility for their behaviour on the field. If the weather picked up and the pitches dried out and the ball is dry, hopefully we are in for a great inter-county championship.”

However, the Boherlahan-Dualla clubman is critical of the type of coaching that has developed in recent years with the increased abuse of the handpass, with throwing becoming a blight on the game, which has made refereeing a lot more difficult.

“If you study the warm-ups, there is a lot of fouling, throwing of the ball, charging in possession,” Ryan says.

“There has to be huge emphasis on our (hurling) coaching and how we are coaching, especially at underage where we create an environment where it doesn’t pay to foul.

“You see where referees are awarding frees for throwing or overcarrying in the first ten minutes, the first people that will react are the players as they are very intelligent people who are at the top of their game, they will readjust. The converse is also true that if we allow too much throwing and overcarrying, players will continue to do it.

“If you have a passage of play where you see a guy giving a perfectly good handpass, why is he is doing it because the previous one he received was a throw, and he doesn’t want to give the referee a decision to make.”

He added: “Everyone wants to see the game flow, that is predominantly down to the players, but our challenge in referee development is to get the referees to apply the rules all the time and if you can get it across to them, at every level, that the easiest part of the game is to apply the rules in the first ten minutes as teams will adjust and play within the rules which makes the game a lot easier. It is up to the players to make the game a spectacle, not the referees.”

In terms of the over-carrying of the ball which has become another difficult area to referee with the development of the passing game, Ryan admits this is harder to address without a change in approach from teams and a return to more direct hurling.

“The game is being played where it is possession-based where you take three steps, draw the challenge, and then take three steps to get away and you are already overcarrying,” he said.

“The teams that are successful at all levels are those that play the ball away before the tackle comes, keep the ball moving. You have corner backs and wing backs getting up the field and getting scores, we sometimes have more wingbacks scoring more than your full-forward line, as Limerick have shown.”