FORMER CORK STAR and current pundit Tomás Mulcahy believes that Wexford manager Davy Fitzgerald should have been banished to the stands yesterday.
There could be a heavy punishment in store for Fitzgerald after he raced onto the Nowlan Park pitch during the first half of the Allianz Hurling League semi-final defeat to Tipperary, before getting involved with opposition players Niall O’Meara and Jason Forde.
Fitzgerald escaped with a talking-to but he could face a touchline ban for the county’s opening two championship games, when GAA chiefs meet to discuss the contents of referee Diarmuid Kirwan’s match report.
Mulcahy, speaking to the RTÉ GAA podcast, described Fitzgerald’s actions as “unacceptable.”
He said: ”Today was unacceptable from his side of things.
Yeah, you can get carried away but you just cannot enter the field of play, you cannot be sparring up to opponents, you cannot be shouldering players.
“Maybe the disappointment today was from the referee (Diarmuid Kirwan), that he let him go back onto the sideline. I thought he should be put up into the stand.
“Maybe that will teach Davy a lesson. It could have been a serious free-for-all if other players had joined it – and he’s inside in the middle of it.”
Fitzgerald was irate when Wexford were denied a free for James Breen, before the defender was turned over and Tipperary scored their second goal.
But Mulcahy said: “There were frees given against Tipperary today where everybody felt they were harsh frees. You didn’t see Michael Ryan running in off the field.
“I’m not stoping his (Fitzgerald’s) passion from the line and the way he jizzes up a team but he’s not allowed to cross the line and go in and challenge a player, and it’s not good enough.
He can air his grievances with the linesman, there’s a fourth official behind him but all he wanted to do was go into Diarmuid Kirwan and it could have turned out to be pretty nasty. The referee needed to take more action and put him up in the stand.
“When he sees this today, he’ll agree he was out of order.”
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