If I hear one more person complain about the fcuking ref I’ll have an aneurism, The ref is a variable that you CANNOT predict or factor in to game plan.
I agree that it is not possible to control the ref but it is possible to influence him.
And this is something that we have been woefully inadequate at doing for as long as I can remember.
It is something that all the great managers and their teams in all sports have in their locker.
Have a look at cody and his “let the game flow, it’s a mans game” stuff the week of a game.
Kiely when refs were told to clamp down on the headshots a couple of years ago, Sheedy the same, all of them.
Kerry have been doing it forever, its all part of game prep.
Last Sunday we had a nervous rookie ref, first big game and we did nothing to try and influence him.
He didn’t know what to do for the black card incident so he went to Liam Gordon on the sideline who made the decision for him.
Why didn’t all the cork backs surround the ref and argue the decision? If they had would he have produced the yellow card so quickly for the sending off?
On the Daragh Fitz head shot again the cork players did nothing.
We are seen as a nice and an agreeable hurling team and have been now for a long time.
The problem with being nice and agreeable is that people will take advantage of you as they know there will be no pushback.
Owens is the ref on Sunday, a ref who like Brian Gavin has stated that he loves reffing cork games. Of course he does as we are a ref’s dream being so agreeable.
Rightly or wrongly the perception is out there that Owens gave 4 massive decisions against us last year the yielded 10 points for Limerick and put us out of the championship, can that perception be used to influence Owens on Sunday?
Will we see Pat Ryan reference it in interviews this week?
Will we see our players get in his ear on Sunday or will we let the clare players do all the roaring and shouting at him?
We saw it with the U20 against clare during the sideline incident they all piled in, no doubt the ref watching sub-consciously noted that this is not a nice and agreeable team.
Refs obviously are human too and don’t like the thought of been chased around the field and roared at.
If we had a strategy for influencing refs like all the top teams maybe last year it would have given us the one decision we neededover 3 games (an extra free in for us or a scored free not given to the opposition) that would have got us out of munster. Inches.
And yes I do also realise that we have loads of other pressing issues to address to get things right but this 'nice and agreeable tag has to go'