Kilkelly slams ’disgraceful’ officiating

Celtic manager slams ‘disgraceful’ officiating


Declan Kilkelly outraged after FAI Junior Cup exit in Limerick

Daniel Carey

CASTLEBAR Celtic manager Declan Kilkelly has described the officiating at last Sunday’s FAI Junior Cup match between his side and Limerick outfit Rathkeale as ‘disgraceful’. Kilkelly, who is also manager of Mayo’s Oscar Traynor Trophy team, has called for an overhaul in the monitoring of referees and their assistants.
The main talking point after the game, which finished 2-1 in favour of Rathkeale, was the Limerick side’s equaliser, which Kilkelly described as ‘embarrassingly offside’. But the manager was also incensed by the fact that Peter Dravins had what he called a ‘perfectly good goal’ ruled out in the closing stages. The decision to disallow what would have been the equaliser was, Kilkelly said, ‘an absolute disgrace’, and the manager was sent to the stand in its aftermath for protesting too much.
“In this day and age, players only want fair play,” he told The Mayo News. “That’s all. If it’s [a] marginal [decision], you’ll swallow it. But when there are yards involved, then it’s cheating. [Even] a couple of their supporters said to me coming out: ‘Ye were robbed, lads’.
“It probably cost our club in the region of €1,500 to get there [on Sunday]. Because we prepared well. We left at half eight in the morning, we stopped for breakfast in Gort; we stopped again in Gort for a meal on the way back. Players make a big commitment, train two nights a week, and all you want is fair play.”
Kilkelly insisted that his extreme disappointment was not a case of ‘sour grapes’ – he said in 20 years of playing, he always ‘held my hands up’ if he ‘made a mistake’, and that if the better team had won the game, he would accept that.
But despite being without a number of key players and giving a below-par performance, Celtic did ‘well enough to win’ on Sunday, he says. Having gone 1-0 up thanks to a goal from Seán McHale, they conceded the controversial equaliser in the 61st minute, and Rathkeale went ahead two minutes later.
“It’s sickening,” the Celtic boss reflected. “I respect referees. But some officials aren’t able to do the job, and regardless of what they say, it’s a job, and they’re getting paid to do it ... If players do anything wrong, they get punished. If a player gets sent off, he misses next week’s game … This [controversy] will be highlighted this week, but then it’s brushed under the carpet again, and the same thing will happen next week and the week after. Unfortunately, it’s stopping soccer from progressing when you see officials like that, and it’s happening everywhere.”
Kilkelly, whose side have now exited the FAI’s premier competition at junior level, said the standard and fitness of refereeing around the country needed to improve. He added that the performances of officials should be properly monitored by ‘bosses’.
“If they’re getting paid to do a job every week, they should be fit enough to do the job,” he said. “And if they can’t do the job – if they don’t understand the laws [of the game], or if they don’t understand how to do the line – then they shouldn’t be refereeing. Because it’s not fair on the two squads of players or the two management teams … If you’re beaten by a better team, you’ll say ‘fair enough’, but if it’s taken away from you by that kind of stuff, it’ll turn fellas away from football.”

FULL FAI JUNIOR CUP COVERAGE PAGES 8-9