Brian Gavin: Dubs' defeat of Limerick took a lot of refereeing

Liam Gordon himself could have been forgiven for feeling he was in for an easy one, but by God it did not turn out that way. Almost all the refereeing that had to be done across the two games was in Croke Park and it took a bit of handling from Gordon. He had to dish out a lot of yellow cards and of course the red card for Chris Crummey.

While Gearóid Hegarty went down somewhat easily, there was certainly contact made by Crummey’s elbow to Hegarty’s head, and we knew this was only going to end in one way as has been the practice going back to the league.

The phrase is 'contact with the head and it’s a red' except for mistimed flicks of the hurl, which comes under 'careless use of the stick' and is deemed to be a yellow card.

After the Munster final, opinions on Thomas Walsh’s officiating were incredibly mixed. Some said he let too much go, many said he was right to let Cork and Limerick go at it.

Clearly, Limerick had taken some of this into consideration because at times they were stopping when fouled. Cian Lynch certainly did, Diarmaid Byrnes another time in the second half, and Aaron Gillane was about to but he had advantage and tapped the ball over the bar.

Outside of goal opportunities, Limerick appeared to believe the advantage lay in the free being given for the likes of Gillane and Byrnes to send over the bar, rather than see advantage fizzling out and the ball going the way of their opponents. It was an interesting policy but obviously wasn’t enough for them to win on the day.

Gordon gave an excellent performance. He was calm and tried to allow the play to continue where  possible and he has to be a strong favourite to steward his first All-Ireland senior final now that his native Galway are out of the picture.

He has come a long way since being thrown into the deep end of the Munster Championship during the Covid era. There have been a couple of bumps along the way since but he deserves the July 20 appointment.

Dublin manager Niall Ó Ceallacháin was booked at half-time for remonstrating, which he had been doing for a lot of the first half, and Gordon was correct to do so. What we didn’t want to see was a repeat of what happened at half-time in the Munster final.

In the Gaelic Grounds, it was an armchair ride for Seán Stack, although I did think giving the free to Conor Whelan before Galway were through for what would have been a certain penalty was harsh.

Galway goalkeeper Darach Fahy also avoided giving away a free for a direct pick-up off the ground, but in fairness to Stack that infringement was extremely difficult to see from the angle that he had.

You would imagine Walsh, Owens and Murphy will come into the reckoning for the All-Ireland semi-finals as the likes of Stack and Colm Lyons’ counties are involved.

There will be a lot of interest in whether the central referees appointments committee give Walsh another chance following the polarising views of his display in Limerick.

Owens has bounced back to make himself what I would consider a certainty for one of the semi-finals but Walsh should be there too. He was the man in the middle for the Limerick-Cork semi-final last year as he was in 2022 for the Limerick-Galway semi and as far as I’m concerned has demonstrated enough to be there again.

Walsh has the makings of being a multiple All-Ireland final referee. He is the future of inter-county hurling refereeing and the GAA have to show trust in him.