Austin O'Malley

speaker

162 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 20 Aug

Austin O'Malley’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 2.

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The Claire Byrne Show · Could be see VAR in GAA? · 6 Aug 2026 podcast

And again, for a challenge system to be there, it would probably intimidate that there would be some level of technology sitting behind it that perhaps the referee does have somebody sitting upstairs in Crow Park or something that has access to all the different angles and that he can go and review that then if it's the team captain or the actual manager.

So I think that would be a good one because obviously, look, I mean, there's human error involved in all of these things.

And as I've alluded to earlier, the game is so quick.

and judgements have to be made in a split second, that I think that would be a nice out and it would give a little bit of breathing space as well for the actual referee to, you know, just to take a moment, a pause and reflect and revisit, you know, a key, key decision that could really turn a game on its head as well.

So I would be in favour of that.

Yeah, well, I think the number, and probably that's open for debate as well, but certainly even if it was two per game, that you could actually, that it could be signalled from the sideline that you wanted to challenge a call and that the ref could, as I said, take a pause and review it.

I don't think that would slow the game down significantly, but there are some major, major calls that have major, major bearings on games.

And generally everybody involved within the game are trying to do it in the right spirit.

And I think that goes from both sides, from the referee end.

and teams and captains and managers perspective so I think it is it would be a good one and I don't think it would be as cumbersome maybe as a VAR where you get to challenge every decision or he goes back over everyone but I think it would smarten up the whole thing definitely and it would bring a little bit more accountability into it

No you're you're correct in that and I think that's one thing probably took from the the World Cup was just the truncated nature of games even back to the you know the extra water breaks and that but you know the game like it has slowed it certainly slowed that down and I think within the GA we need to be very very careful at the moment in terms of of this as well because I do think VAR is stretched too far at the moment what we have at the moment is particularly in one of the fastest field games in the world you do not want to damage that as a product and I think

with the new rules and the FRC, what they've done is they've completely changed the complexion of Gaelic football as well in that it's a much, much quicker game.

And I think it's more impactful and it's a more engaging game from a spectator's perspective.

And I was only saying to someone recently, like if you bring in VAR and everything gets very cumbersome and truncated, you're actually opening up for these two-minute blocks where actually your audience can, like we all know everybody is pulling out their phones and scrolling.

You might get that level of disengagement from actually playing

you know, people within the grounds, but also people watching as well.

So I think we need to be very, very careful with that.

No, it absolutely isn't.

But I think the evolution of the game, as I've said there, and it does need to be supported.

And I suppose the big thing, even if you look at business now, in terms of when you look at the pace of technology in it, and there's that concept like where it's human first and then technology assistant.

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