He reasoned: “Let me be clear: without our fabulous army of referees throughout the country, there would be no games in the first place.

“Forget the flagship inter-county fare for a minute: how would those countless juvenile and adult club games, or those multitude of schools matches, happen at all without them?

So, we should cherish our referees while making sure that our training and assessment programmes deliver a consistently higher standard each year.

Consistency, of course, is that elusive state of refereeing nirvana that we never seem to achieve.

“But could our match officials be helped by a radical policy shift? Is it time to bite the bullet and have two referees? For obvious reasons, this would surely be impossible at club level, where there are ongoing recruitment challenges.

“But why not inter-county, and more especially in hurling where the sliotar is now moving up and down the pitch at a supersonic rate?

“There were refereeing controversies in both All-Ireland hurling semi-finals this year.

“Now, it’s debatable whether a second referee would have spotted the sideline deflection that could have earned Limerick an equalising ‘65’ against Kilkenny; or whether his presence would have ensured that at least one of Tipperary’s three disallowed goals against Wexford stood.

“But watching those admittedly thrilling matches, you couldn’t help but wonder are we asking far too much of one referee?

“Refs are being pulled all over the place at a speed that frequently defies logical processing of what they are meant to have seen. Presuming, of course, they are close enough in the first place to even see it.”