Tipperary football fans felt more than a little peeved on Sunday night after coming within a point of Armagh in the Athletic Grounds in their opening game of the Allianz League. The Division Three encounter saw Tipperary lose after a controversial clash, when the home side scored two points in injury time to steal the win by 0-13 to 2-8. Tipperary had led for most of the game despite being down to 14 men after Robbie Kiely's red card and conceding a 34th minute penalty.
Tipp manager Peter Creedon was furious afterwards, especially with referee David Goldrick's timekeeping, which was a key factor in the late scores.
'The linesman beside me told the referee that time was up and he played another minute after that, so that sums it up for me really,' he said. 'I don’t know what David Coldrick was at, the linesman definitely said when the goalie was kicking the ball out ‘David the time is up’ and he played another minute.Our lads were superb and I won’t take anything away from them, but the performance of the referee was atrocious.'
That was on Sunday afternoon but he clearly hadn't calmed down by Monday night when he spoke to Tipp FM on their sports show 'Extra Time' as he went into more details on his problems with the inter county referee and his performance.
'I’m angry on behalf of the team because the referee did us out of the match. I thought David Coldrick had a howler. Their midfielder drew blood on Barry Grogan in the first half, nothing done. Tipp were the best team but we didn’t win.'
Goldrick is regarded as one of the country's top referees having taken charges of various provincial finals over the last number of years as well as several games in the latter stages of the Championship. However, Cork native Creedon felt the Meathman was well below the standard he expects from a top referee: 'He’s not fit for inter-county refereeing. Not on that performance anyway because if he’s reffing in places like Armagh with a partisan crowd he has to be brave enough and bold enough to make the right calls and he made an awful lot of dubious ones.'
The GAA is unlikely to shy away from taking action having announced in November that it would be introducing sideline bans, after comments from Brian Cody about All-Ireland referee Barry Kelly. Creedon is aware he could be in hot water: 'I know we’re not supposed to be giving out about referees but we’re putting too much effort into this to be robbed by the ref there at the end. Time was up, he should have blown up. A point each would maybe even have been unjust on us as I thought we were the better team.'
Cody only got a slap on the wrist at that stage but it is unlikley that Creedon will go unpunished having made his feeling's known twice on Goldrick and his officials.
You can listen to the full interview here:
H/T to Tipp FM
