David Gough: ‘I then have to go and listen to him on Radio 1 changing his argument – I found that very difficult’

First to Clones where late in a see-saw Ulster final clash between Derry and Armagh, Oak Leaf star Brendan Rogers was shown a black card. The game went to extra-time and Derry played with 14 as Rogers sat out most of the opening half of the additional time.

For a referee, extra-time is a tricky interface. Different colour cards carry over (or don’t) in different ways. And in a roundabout way, Derry would have been better off had Rogers been sent off as, under the rule which stipulates that extra-time is treated as a new game, they would have been restored to a full complement of players.

“It’s a massive anomaly,” Gough said at the launch of SuperValu’s ‘Wear with Pride’ laces campaign.

“If you can imagine going into extra-time and all the officials approach you to find out what the protocol is and what’s happening, because they don’t know themselves.

“So I’ve gone through 75 minutes of a match. I’m already tired and I’m expected straight off the bat to answer somewhat difficult questions. But it’s my job, I’m able to answer them.

“But you can imagine when I open my referee’s card and it’s littered with yellow cards, red cards, black cards, noting offences. I then have to go and change that . . . I have to report on that, so it’s very difficult to then try to change it because notes, yellow cards and red cards don’t carry through to extra-time.

“So if you’re on a yellow card, that yellow card disappears going into extra-time. You can receive a further two yellow cards in extra-time before you’re sent off.

“However, the black cards do (carry over). It’s that messing around with card colours and what happens as a result in (extra-time) which makes it confusing for everyone.

“It would have been better for Brendan Rogers, if that’s who it was, I can’t remember who I black-carded. But if he committed a foul and was red-carded so the Derry team could have restarted play with 15 players.”

Anomaly number two arose in Cork. Seán Powter dragged down Paul Geaney outside the area and denied Kerry a goal-scoring opportunity.

As per rule, Gough binned Powter and awarded Kerry a penalty.

It would prove a game-changing moment and afterwards, Cork manager John Cleary made his unhappiness unclear.

“He said he had seen it and it was outside the box and there was no way it was a penalty. That was his narrative.

“When I explained what had actually happened, that it was a black card and a goal-scoring opportunity, I then have to go and listen to him on [RTÉ] Radio 1 changing his argument from ‘it’s never a penalty’ to ‘it’s never a goal-scoring opportunity’. I found that very difficult to take.

“I have a decision to make on the field. I get one look at it in normal time. I have watched it back, it has been analysed by the referees in Croke Park last night (Wednesday) and it was 100pc the correct decision.”

But the anomaly lies in that had Powter committed a more serious, red-card infraction he might have avoided conceding a penalty even if Cork would have been reduced to 14 for the remainder of the game.

“Seán Powter would have been better striking Paul Geaney and being sent off on a red card . . . and he wouldn’t have given away the penalty. But he committed a black-card offence, he got 10 minutes in the sin-bin and conceded a penalty.

“If he had committed a red-card foul in that instance, it was outside the penalty box, he was still being sent off but there was no penalty resulting. It’s a bizarre scenario where the most serious infraction, which would be the red card, has a lesser punishment.”

And Gough believes there should be greater consultation with referees on rule changes to make the game easier to officiate and understand.

“We have hundreds of rules in that book. They’re quite difficult to remember. They’re quite difficult to recall under pressure, to implement and to understand. And then we have a scenario where we have a standing committee on playing rules bringing in further rules without consulting the referees.

“The language of those rules has huge implications. We’ve had trouble with them in the past, in that they don’t understand the implications for us when we’re refereeing them.

“There are also amendments made to them throughout the year. There’s very little consultation on their part with the elite referees.

“We have a situation now where I found out last week that they’re trialling kick-out rules, free-kick rules and mark rules – that they have to go forward – but they’ve never consulted the referees as to how difficult this is going to be to implement.”