Horan’s timely reminder to ‘top-class’ referee McQuillan
The Cavan whistler refereed four of Dublin’s six championship matches in their run to the All-Ireland last year and has been criticised for some of the decisions made against Kerry in the final. He is also known to have taken charge of several Dublin’s A versus B games this year as well.
Horan initially declared himself fine with the decision but added that the referees review committee would retrospectively look at any contentious issues.
“He’s a top-class inter-county referee,” he said.
“There’s a lot of commentary out there that he is very familiar with the Dublin set up and, as you said, he refereed a lot of their A versus B games this year. But, look, we’re happy with the referee that’s appointed. There’s a review committee there so if there was any questionable decisions they’d review that.
“We just go with the referees that are there. I have a lot of Kerry friends from last year that weren’t too happy with some of his decisions but sin scéal eile.
“The referee has been appointed. The review committee is there to judge referees and that’s not for us to do. I’m sure refereeing A versus B games will have no bearing on his performance against us in Croker.”
Horan also queried the value of the Football Review Committee not having a current inter-county manager on board but did call for more consistency from referees in their application of the rules, particularly the tackle.
“They’ve no current inter-county managers on that though. They’re all guys who… have they managed recently? There’s loads of things you would change, of course there is. Refs [starting a count with his hand]… but.
“The game to me, there’s too many frees. It’s too stop-start and if there’s subs coming on, it’s too slow moving. Maybe define the tackle a little bit more because that’s what drives us crazy. You train and you practise and you go through the tackle and it’s fine in one game and in the next one it might not be fine.”
