Impossible job means Clare v Cork referee should be given slack
Does anyone ever stop to think about how exhausting it must be to referee a Championship game, especially a hurling final that goes to extra time?
Hurling will never be a game of perfect. You only have to listen to the ancient philosopher - Anthony Daly of Clarecastle - to realise that.
Like many of a philosophical bent, Daly took to wandering, and his travels brought him into the strange underworld of Dublin hurling. He found disciples there. He turned those disciples into missionaries, and they spread the sky blue gospel.
Daly's merry men ended up in an All-Ireland semi-final, losing in 2011 to Tipperary.
A Tipp team that had stopped the great Kilkenny team from securing the fabled five-in-a-row a year earlier. But they were pushed right to the wire by Daly's Dubs.
Afterwards, reporters crowded around him, keen for the sage nuggets that he'd been chewing over before dispensing.
Daly of Clarecastle looked them all in the eye before declaiming: "Sure look, hurling, a thousand mad things and someone comes out on top."
Was that ever more true than on Sunday?
Enough of the mad things fell Clare's way to make it their day.
Many of the Banner faithful were in the stand named after one of their own and the founder of the GAA, Michael Cusack.
He was a bit of a Daly too when he got going, as the following makes clear.
“A hurling match is like a city on fire, where the crackling of burning timber and the hissing of the flames swell into the roar of conflagration. We never heard sweeter music than that of the hurling field.”
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But there has been another kind of music since Sunday. Harsh and dissonant, with screamed vocals about Johnny Murphy, the referee who missed the late pull of the jersey on Robbie O'Flynn.
There were other calls too that have been brought into question. All due to the hindsight that is slow motion replays.
Be honest, how many watching in real time on Sunday noticed the pull of O'Flynn's shirt? It was a split second in real time.
And does anyone ever think about how exhausting it must be to referee a Championship game, especially a hurling final that goes to extra time.
One strong argument against extra time in big GAA Championship games is the physical and mental toll on referees.
Men well into their 40s are expected to keep up with play all through. Players are replaced or go down with cramp. Refs are expected to be still at their best, from first whistle to last.
In Sunday's All-Ireland final, Murphy took a bad bang to the head which required treatment.
In the second half of extra time, he seemed to have hamstring trouble.
As was shown on RTE in the post match analysis, puckouts are now regularly taken within four seconds of the ball going dead.
Think of the toll such a fast paced game takes on officials, even away from the physical side.
The mental pressure of keeping up with a sport that is faster than ever before. It must be close to migraine inducing.
Murphy wasn't perfect on Sunday but, whisper it, hurling isn't perfect, either. Imagine if a referee was granted infallible powers for one day and blew every single jersey tug, throw ball and incidence of too many steps? He'd be nailed to the cross publicly.
It's not the game we want. We want the game of a thousand mad things. With that will come mistakes.
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