Top referee hits back at Heffernan's player protection comments

MAYO GAA’s referees administrator has hit back at criticism over the level of protection afforded to Ballina Stephenites' Padraig O’Hora during his side's recent championship quarter-final.

Speaking after their win over Castlebar Mitchels, Ballina manager Niall Heffernan said that O’Hora ‘didn’t get as much protection as he should have got’ after he was hospitalised with a concussion in the first half.

Speaking to The Mayo News after the October meeting of the Mayo GAA county board, Sean Mac Éil branded Heffernan’s comments as ‘very unfair.’

Mac Éil described the incident that left O’Hora concussed as ‘accidental’ and said Heffernan’s comments ‘cast aspersions’ on the match officials and Castlebar Mitchels team.

“Very much his duty [the referee] is the protection of players, and in this instance it was accidental and I don’t think any blame at all could be attributed to the officials, it being an accident,” said McHale, who was a spectator at the game.

“I also think that it also casts aspersions on the opposing players, because obviously one of them clashed with this particular player and that was also unfair because it wasn’t a nasty game. There wasn’t any serious misdeed or violation. It was played in a very good spirit. I was at the game, and as I said, I thought it was very unfair of the manager to make that assertion.”

He added: “There was very few cards in it. It was a very mild-tempered, simple type of football that was played by both sides so there wasn’t any fantastic intensity to it.”

McHale also defended the overall standard of refereeing the Mayo club championships. “By and large, what I’ve noticed after almost one-hundred championship games, the standard of refereeing has been reasonable,” Mac Éil said. “Sure, there have been mistakes, but also the standard of discipline has been very good all round. There are no nasty incidents facing anyone. A few red cards, but nothing major.”