During a post-match interview with the assembled print media, Sheedy, without prompting, expressed his annoyance that John McGrath and Jason Forde had not been awarded frees late in the second period.

“I thought there was much softer frees given in the first half,” said the Tipperary manager.

“I was wondering did the arms go both ways at all [in the first half]. I thought it was only going one way. I just felt some of them that were given in that first half, versus John McGrath and Jason, to me, they were clearly fouled in the second half.”

Smyth, who is also chairman of the Leinster referees’ development committee and a member of Willie Barrett’s national referees’ development committee, is adamant that it is not acceptable for managers to always park blame at the doorstep of the referee.

“There are some managers and you’d wonder does anything inside the team environment ever get addressed, or is it only somebody outside it who gets blamed,” Smyth remarked.

“Referees have to be big boys and take the criticism on board. But the criticism has to be fair and it can’t be about, my team only got two frees in the first-half and the opposition got 14.

“Is there a question of how players are being coached? Sometimes, the issue is not external, it is internal, and we are not looking at that first before we criticise somebody else.”

Smyth added: “We are all very aware of the time that goes into preparing inter-county teams. The referee, too, is putting in the work, is doing his fitness tests. He doesn’t want to make a key-game decision that will affect the outcome of the game.

“When you are playing, you are trying your best and are assessed in every performance. The same applies to referees. Managers have to realise that refereeing is a competitive environment.”

What Meath native Smyth sees as most important is establishing greater communication between the national referees body and inter-county managers. There needs to be a mechanism, he insisted, to allow for explanation and review of a referee’s performance so as to ensure better understanding of why and how a referee arrived at a particular decision.

“We have to explain what we actually do. The word has to get out there that we sat down with hurling referees on Tuesday evening and went through decisions from the opening three rounds of the league, the sendings-off, the non-sendings-off, the frees that were given and the ones that weren’t.

“Referees are answerable. It is not a comfortable place when they are asked to explain why they didn’t make a decision. We can’t have a situation where we allow foul play to win games.

“The second part in establishing greater communication is a bit more difficult for the simple reason that if a manager has a complaint about a referee’s performance and picks up the phone to Willie Barrett to say, I have an issue about our game last week, is he trying to influence the referee next week.

“I know that wouldn’t be the case, so we need to iron out how does that whole communication work. Any manager should be able to pick up the phone and ask has an incident been addressed and then we can explain to them how we dealt with it.”

Consistency from the men in the middle is another area where improvements can be made.

“When you look at the second round of the league, there were a couple of head-high tackles which weren’t punished. Referees were asked why this was the case. If one referee correctly punishes a head-high tackle, are other referees letting him down by not doing likewise?

“If we are not consistent, we are going nowhere.”