Dónal Óg Cusack has called on the GAA to show leadership on refereeing after a day of unenforced rules in the provincial hurling championships.
"Hurling has never been better," said the former Cork goalkeeper on The Sunday Game.
"The game is excellent but one of the biggest problems that we have in the game is the standard of refereeing.
"We respect referees. Especially at club level, the games won't go ahead without referees. But it's just not good enough.
"Has the day come to get some sort of technology introduced into the games to help them?
"The GAA are going to have make big decisions as well. There are way bigger decisions in the game of hurling than trying to handpass the ball quickly.
"The tackle is one of the biggest issues. A number of years ago when some of us were speaking about the spare hand [tackle] and all of the issues that that was going to bring, the GAA avoided trying to define it.
"You would have to question them from a leadership point of view."
"For some reason the referees don't seem to be applying it when it seems obvious that they should"
— The Sunday Game (@TheSundayGame) May 25, 2025
Dónal Óg Cusack and Liam Sheedy react to the black card issue after a flashpoint in Cork v Waterford
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Cusack and former Tipperary manager Liam Sheedy also questioned referee Johnny Murphy deciding not to award a penalty against Cork's Mark Coleman for denying a goal-scoring opportunity to Waterford's Stephen Bennett.
Coleman wasn't even shown yellow as Waterford had a to settle for a free.
Though it could be argued that the restrictive and vague framing of hurling's 'black card' rule - it can only be for a 'pull down', trip or careless use of the hurley - has led to it being rarely enforced.
"We had a similar scenario in the game last week [Limerick v Cork]," said Sheedy. "I think it has to be reviewed because right now it's not being applied.
"You might see it in February or March but you certainly won't see it in May or going on in the championship."
Time to fix hurling's broken and ignored black-card rule (From 2022)
Cusack added: "Why was it brought in? It was brought in to stop, [for] out and out goal chances, cynical fouling and professional fouling.
"It was a good rule and when it came in first we saw lots of situations where we would have seen defenders taking down players [previously].
"But for some reason, referees don't seem to be applying it when it seems obvious that they should."
"It's something like you'd see in the French Revolution... I can't understand how the umpires didn't see that"
— The Sunday Game (@TheSundayGame) May 25, 2025
Dónal Óg Cusack and Liam Sheedy look back on some of the challenges from Galway v Dublin
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The panel also agreed that three red cards had been missed in Galway's win over Dublin.
Cusack questioned why the umpires had not alerted Colm Lyons to Galway keeper Darach Fahy swiping at AJ Murphy off the ball.
"We've said it on numerous occasions. There is a duty on the umpires to be calling the referees.
"There's a duty on the tackler [Daithi Burke on Conor Burke] in those situations to be careful. A shoulder to the chest could go seriously wrong for a player.
"The last one [Conor Donohue's pull across the neck of John Fleming] is something that would have been happening in the Bastille [the guillotine]. I can't understand how the umpires didn't see that.
"There's nothing tough about that kind of tackling."
