All-Ireland Final referee takes charge of U14 game
All-Ireland Final referee Brendan Cawley with U14 captains, Dara Walsh and John Coates ahead of this evening's Championship game between Kilcullen and Naas Photo: Kilcullen GAA social media pages
Only in the GAA!
On Sunday, it was the biggest day of Brendan Cawley’s refereeing career as he took charge of the All-Ireland Football Final between Kerry and Donegal in front over 80,000 people in Croke Park and a television audience around the country of over 1 million viewers. In doing so, he became the first Kildare man to referee football's showpiece game since Mick Monahan 20 years ago.
The day turned out to be a dream for Cawley as his understated performance, and that of his umpire team of Johnny Farrell, Eoghan Fitzpatrick, Lee Moore and David Coady, went completely under the radar. They received the ultimate in refereeing praise of barely being noticed, nor hardly mentioned in the post match discussions.
But just three days later and it was back to basics for Cawley as he refereed an Under 14G Championship game this evening in Kilcullen between the hosts and Naas.
No doubt, Brendan treated the two games the same and prepared just as diligently for tonight’s game as he did for Sunday’s showpiece event.
