LAST UPDATE | 15 Oct 2023
KILCOO MANAGER, KARL Lacey, has insisted he had no knowledge of the situation that unfolded around referee Paul Faloon, and his replacement David Gough, withdrawing from the Down county final.
The Kilcoo club had lodged an appeal with their own county, opposing Faloon’s appointment. When that failed, they escalated it all the way to the Disputes Resolution Authority, who also turned it down on Saturday morning.
By then, the Down county board already had Gough on standby from Friday evening, depending on the result. Although it ruled in favour of Faloon, it wasn’t a tenable situation and when he withdrew, it is understood Gough accepted.
However, Gough then reconsidered. Given that Faloon is a colleague on the National Referee’s panel, it must have been an uncomfortable situation, and the duty fell to stand-by referee, Brian Higgins.
Asked after the final, a nine-point win for Kilcoo over Burren who this had impacted on team preparations, Lacey said, “I wasn’t involved in any of it. My job was to keep the players focussed and the players weren’t involved in anything in the background.”
The 2012 Footballer of the Year continued, “I just wanted to make sure the players were shielded from all of that, that it wasn’t a distraction and it wasn’t.
“I don’t know the ins and outs of what was going on. It wasn’t going to affect me and it wasn’t going to affect any of the boys today.”
This is Lacey’s first season of managing Kilcoo, and he had his Four Masters clubmate, the former Donegal defender Barry Dunnion alongside him.
He insisted that he had no involvement with the appeal.
“I was completely out of it. It was a club thing. I don’t know whatever has gone on in the past, whatever has happened. I had no knowledge of what was going on so there was no point me going into any of those conversations.
“It was the players, first and foremost. I wanted the players tuned in.
“The ref, I don’t get caught up in that. They do a fantastic job and I have no issues with the referees. There’s no more discussion on it.”
On Sunday morning, the staging of the game itself was thrown into doubt, but Lacey insists he was only becoming aware of that situation after the match.
“It was the first I heard of it. Mind you, I put my phone off early in the morning and I don’t look at things. I suppose the early throw-in helped too. But we got the group together early and travelled down early as well,” he said.
“We are where we are now, where we want to be, so we are happy with that.”
In the end, Down appointed Brian Higgins from the Annaclone club.
Higgins is believed to have secured the permission of Faloon, and had been the stand-in referee for the final. The rest of the refereeing team, Colm Gribben and Mark Turley also took part.
Down officials had a crowd of hundreds outside the gates of Pairc Esler at lunchtime, refusing to open the gates until they had secured a referee to take charge.
Down county board chairman Jack Devaney told reporters that they would be releasing a statement around the controversy in the near future.
