Advertisement
Mayo's Jason Gibbons. Donall Farmer/INPHO
Ref Justice

Horan baffled by 'unbelievable' refereeing - but admits Mayo just stopped playing

Horan’s men sucker-punched by two late Eoghan O’Gara goals in Croke Park.

JAMES HORAN HELD referee Cormac Reilly responsible for some “unbelievable” decisions but admitted that Mayo only have themselves to blame after they threw away a win against Dublin.

Mayo were five points up with five minutes to play in Croke Park but were sucker-punched by two late Eoghan O’Gara goals which snatched a 3-14 to 2-17 draw for the Dubs.

“To concede that much with a couple of minutes to go is very disappointing,” Horan said.

“We had been conceding a lot of goals all the league campaign and three more today so that’s disappointing.

[It was] a bit of everything — a little bit of fatigue; we made some poor decisions on our hand passing; we went a little bit deep maybe looking for ball that we needed higher up the field. We just stopped playing a little bit as opposed to playing through and playing out the game. They are things we’ll look at.

Mayo lost Colm Boyle to a black card for a trip on Alan Brogan in the first half but Dublin were reduced to 14 shortly afterwards when Stephen Cluxton was sent off.

There were moments when Reilly might have produced another black card but Horan said his criticisms were focused more on the general refereeing and free count rather than one specific incident.

“We thought the referee’s display was pretty poor to put it quite mildly, unbelievable at times.

“But look it, we still should have been good enough to close out the game and we didn’t.

“I thought there was a lot of frees that we could have got that we didn’t get.

“[There were] no specific incidents. Some of them were borderline black cards but nothing specific.

“I just thought overall there were some decisions that were crazy during the game as regards where we should have got frees and didn’t.”

Dublin’s number one problem – who will replace Stephen Cluxton this weekend?

Your Voice
Readers Comments
10
    Submit a report
    Please help us understand how this comment violates our community guidelines.
    Thank you for the feedback
    Your feedback has been sent to our team for review.