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 Irish examiner 17th February 2004 | |||
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By Diarmuid O'Flynn
Off the field, both Ger Cunningham, the Newtown coach, and Mick Nolan, one of the O'Loughlin's three wise men, share a refreshing honesty.
Both had the same opinion on the last-second free, pointed in courageous fashion by Newtownshandrum's Ben O'Connor, that sees this game go to a replay in Thurles on Saturday and both also admitted to making sideline errors during the course of the game.
First to that contentious free, with Nolan having first say: "It baffled me, but that wasn't the only one. On another occasion Alan Geoghegan was flattened in the middle of the field after giving a hand pass, and that should have been a free to us play went on and he gave them a free for nothing. "Martin Comerford was tripped near the end also, which should have been a free and could have been another point for us. What was worse from our point of view was that there were three line balls given against us near the end that weren't even out over the line. Still, with all the complaining about some earlier decisions against Newtown, I suppose he was trying to balance things out. At the end of the day, I think both of us would have settled for the draw, it would have been tough for either team to lose yesterday. We haven't been informed yet who's going to be in charge the next day but the referee will have to be changed for the replay, that's all we know."
Cunningham shared those sentiments. "I have no doubt about it, the referee was trying to balance things out. I didn't think the last free he gave us was a free at all. After some of the decisions he had given against us earlier however, we'll take it."
Newtown captain John McCarthy, equally blunt, was quoted yesterday as saying that with 12 Newtown players having an off-day, the referee was entitled to one also. Generous, but that made it no less a problem for the Newtown sideline.
"That's fine but we can take responsibility for the players, we can have some control over that, but we have no control over the referee, and he could well have cost us this game," Cunningham said.
"We made mistakes, there's no question about that. Bringing off Dan O'Riordan cost us our shape. That move had worked for us in the previous two games, bringing in Mike Morrissey to give Ben a break, but obviously in this case, it didn't. I suppose afterwards fellas could be forgiven for saying that the only three moves Newtown needed to make was to get rid of the three selectors! Still, I think that was the first major mistake we made all year, which isn't a bad record.
"We had to give Ben a break, and I make no apology for that. People have no idea how sick he was at half-time.
And the O'Loughlin's sideline error? Apart from their inertia as Ben O'Connor went to town on Andy Comerford, it concerned Mick Nolan's own son, 17-year-old 5th year student Maurice, who had three points on the board from corner-forward after just eight minutes.
"Their full-back line was in trouble, we had pace in there, and bringing him (Maurice) out to the wing wasn't a great idea."
The upshot is that they will have to do it all again next Saturday.
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