Manager slams officials

Manager slams ‘terrible’ official

Daniel Carey

MAYO manager Billy Fitzpatrick launched a blistering attack on referee Gerry McCarron after three of his players were sent off in Sunday’s All-Ireland Junior Football Championship semi-final.
“The officials were just terrible,” Fitzpatrick told The Mayo News. “I haven’t witnessed anything like it in my playing career or being involved with teams [as a manager], to be quite honest with you. That refereeing was a pure and utter disgrace. That was a good game of football, it was championship football. I didn’t see anything really dirty in the game.”
Mayo led by three points when Ronan McNamara became the first of their number to be dismissed. Pat Casey and Alan Costello were also prematurely ejected before the end.
“The game was in the balance,” Fitzpatrick said of the period immediately after McNamara’s dismissal. “We were still a point up but down to 14 men. We were holding steady and it looked like we might go on and win it. But Ronan McNamara’s loss at midfield was huge. We had to bring Rory Hannick out and he was a loss inside.
“Then the second sending-off hammered us. It was very hard to cope with the loss of two players – that was too much. And Pat Casey was rugby-tackled and brought to the ground. Maybe he retaliated coming up, but the two of them should have gone if one of them was going to go. [Instead] he gave a red to Pat Casey and a yellow to the Wexford man.”
As for the football side of things, Fitzpatrick was pleased with the way his team battled back from a poor start. But as they were cut down to a dozen players, Wexford took charge.
“It took us a long time to settle. Like a lot of Mayo teams, we were 15 minutes playing before we decided to play at all, and we let them get a grip on the game. But we stormed into the match after that. We looked like a winning team at that stage, and put on the pressure up to half time. Again, in the second half we were holding our own, we were three points up, and it looked like we were well in the game. The turning point was the [first] sending-off. I’m just so disgusted with it all. I’m not a bad loser by any means, but you like to get fair play.”