Extra time puzzle confuses Croke Park

THERE wasn’t a journalist in Croke Park who knew what was happening. Once Kilkenny referee Seán Cleere blew for full-time, five or six reporters bounded breathlessly for the lift. Their task? To elicit a few words from the Clare and Galway minor management teams about their sides’ impending replay.
The sight of the referee, his linesmen and umpires talking to each other in the middle of Croke Park and clearly going nowhere should have flicked a dim light bulb on in even one of us. Nothing happened. Instead, the crammed lift sped downwards. When it opened we were met by a gaggle of red-faced colleagues. “Er, there’s extra time,” they mumbled, directing the bemused lift attendant to bring us back up to the press box on the seventh floor. We vowed to keep this lapse to ourselves, only to find out later that hardly anybody knew that a provision had been made for extra time.
“We were in the dark,” Clare joint manager Donal Maloney said after extra time had been played and Clare had lost by five points. Hearing this, the reporters present perked up slightly. We weren’t alone in knowing nothing.
“Just when the game ended,” he replied when asked when he was told Clare and Galway would have to play for an additional 20 minutes. He accepted that the lack of information wasn’t ideal.
“That’s a fair point but we weren’t going to kick up. We felt that in the last five minutes of normal time that we had momentum so we said ‘look, we’re going to go ahead’. Maybe we should have gone for another day. I think both teams maybe deserved another day but we’ve no complaints. Galway deserved their win,” he added.
Galway manager Mattie Murphy said his management team were equally addled. Murphy could sleepwalk to Croke Park at this stage, having guided Galway to five All-Ireland minor titles. Yet even the Gort man drew a blank on the extra time conundrum.
“Nobody knew. RTÉ didn’t know, we didn’t know. But sure they don’t tell us these things, yet they can turn around and re-schedule the matches as they go along,” he fumed, referring to the fact that, as Munster minor champions, Clare were originally down to play Galway this coming Sunday and not last week.
“I mean if you look at the schedule for matches, the Munster champions are supposed to be in Croke Park next Sunday and we had budgeted for that. All of a sudden, out of the blue, they move it,” he added.
Murphy says Galway would have had no issue replaying, rather than playing extra time.
“We’d gladly have taken a replay at that stage because Clare had been through a fairly strenuous Munster campaign and they had two games since the Leaving Cert. I thought it might be an advantage to them in terms of conditioning and fitness. But thanks be to God we matched them in that anyway,” he smiled.

Fitzgerald learned of extra time near game’s end

Clare GAA County Board secretary Pat Fitzgerald has told The Clare Champion that the first he heard of the possibility of extra time in Croke Park at Sunday’s All-Ireland minor hurling semi-final, was when he was approached by GAA national match officials manager Pat Doherty.
“Just as the game was over, Patrick Doherty came to us and said ‘there is extra time as you know’. That’s the time that I realised it,” the Clare secretary said.
However, Fitzgerald did acknowledge that the rule regarding extra time is in the GAA rulebook, although he has yet to elicit at what forum it had been adopted.
“It took me by surprise for a few minutes. Then I thought about it. The thing about rules is that you’re supposed to know the rules and you’re supposed to be bound by them. I was aware that it was in the book. I think it’s 3.5 in part two of the rulebook but that’s on the basis that the authority in charge of games has it adopted. I would think from knowing them, that they have it adopted,” Fitzgerald stated. 
“Don’t have any doubt; I checked everything on Tuesday morning thoroughly. The only thing that I haven’t before me is where they adopted it at Central Competitions Control Committee (CCC) level. But I’m sure that they would have adopted it. They wouldn’t get away with it otherwise,” he added.
Fitzgerald acknowledged that Clare had a choice to make. They could have railed against the playing of extra time or opted, as they did, to play on.
“There is no doubt there was no provision made in the games programme for it. Galway didn’t know about it either. I thought and probably was hoping that there would be another game. The way I looked at it you could do two things. You could stand up and make a big protest about it and probably upset players and team management and probably lose it afterwards. I think it would have been our (Clare County Board) preferred choice not to play it but it’s not under my area,” he said.
There was the option of talking to Galway and possibly agreeing to a replay. However, the Clare secretary isn’t certain if Galway would have agreed, given that they had equalised late in normal time and had the momentum.
“You had an option, which was to go to the opposition. I’d be afraid that I wouldn’t get the type of reaction that they might say they were going to give now. If they had come to us at that stage, what I would have done is put it to (Clare County Board chairman) Michael O’Neill and the selectors because it would be their judgement call,” Fitzgerald concluded.