Referees’ chief Willie Barrett says Sean Cleere was unfortunate with the second disallowed Tipperary goal on Sunday.

Cleere ruled out three Premier County majors during the course of their battling All-Ireland semi-final victory over Wexford at Croke Park.

The first one from Michael Breen was chalked off for an innocuous-looking foul in the build-up; the second – finished to the net by John McGrath - was cancelled out when Hawk-Eye deemed that Lee Chin’s free had in fact gone over the crossbar before being caught by Brian Hogan more than 30 seconds and two phases of play earlier; the third from Jake Morris was erroneously scrapped when an advantage wasn’t played.

Barrett says the rather bizarre Hawk-eye incident was out of the Kilkenny official’s hands: “In fairness to the guy, Sean Cleere’s integrity, the one thing for certain, it’s not in question,” the Tipp man told The Irish Daily Star.

“The Hawk-eye one, he was unfortunate with. He got a clear instruction on Hawk-eye – the umpires did – not to call Hawk-eye and if that scenario did arise that Hawk-eye would in actual fact make the call for him.

“Unfortunately, in the meantime, a goal was scored and that’s what caused the real problem. He was a bit unlucky in that one. Hawk-eye would have looked at it more than once – that may be the reason for the delay. I’m not sure what it was.”

Tweet

Most Read Stories