Carlow boss Turlough O'Brien feels the ban that Dublin's Diarmuid Connolly received from last month's Leinster SFC quarter-final against the Barrowsiders was a case of punishment outweighing the crime.

Connolly was hit with a 12-week suspension for pushing linesman Ciaran Branagan during the Dubs' 12-point victory in Portlaoise and speaking with the panel on 'Off the Ball' yesterday, O'Brien branded the St Vincent's man's punishment as "outrageous".

"My view at the time was that it was a Dublin line ball, first of all. And, the linesman flagged it for Carlow. Diarmuid Connolly didn't realise he had flagged it for Carlow. He'd gone to retrieve the ball.

"Our guys saw the flag our way so they went to get the ball from Diarmuid and it ended up a bit of a wrestling match and it just escalated a little bit and look, he had a few words with the linesman and he did put his hand on him but the disciplinary rules need an overhaul. 

"The suspension is too extreme for what happened. I had a lot of sympathy for him to be honest with you. Certainly he needed to be reprimanded in someway but a 12 week suspension for that is outrageous."

He added: "My take on a lot of this is when referees send players off for an incident, they often write up the report by looking at the rule book first instead of describing what happened...and you can end up being charged with the more serious offence and once he does that - that's your suspension cast in stone...we'd be better to have three or four citing commissioners to look at an incident after a game, make a ruling on it and that's the end of it."

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