Derry manager Brian McIver has stepped down after his county's loss to Galway in the All-Ireland football qualifier.
The outgoing boss announced it in his post-game interview with RTE, which was a bizarre lambasting of the referee over his handling of the game, with focus on the black card and the lack of a penalty to Derry in the game.
What do you about it? You come down here, plan, lads put in an effort and you turn around and you get a referee like that there. All you have to do is look at the pattern of frees and a six-point turnaround.
Having said that, we accept a level of responsibility ourselves. You can't always totally always in a match blame the referee.
But at the end of the day, matches should be decided by players and not referees.
McIver's ire wasn't just limited to today's referee, but the standard of refereeing in general
I have given my life in terms of GAA - I had to go in to a bunch of players and thank them for all their work from the management. I just can't handle referee decisions like that any longer. I have to step down. Everything in the GAA has moved on in the last 20 years except the standard of refereeing. Maybe I saw that totally biased but it was one of the worst refereeing decisions I have ever seen in my life.
After the first-half, he kept them in the game. They scored one point from play and seven frees. Unreal. The black card? That was just absolutely another crazy decision. These guys are accountable to nobody. Everything in the GAA is designed to improve things and the standard of refereeing has just got worse down the years.
I'm standing down of course. I couldn't live with that any longer. That is no reflection on the players - the players have given everything and I have been very pleased with their commitment over the last three years. And the same with the county board, and backroom team. Everybody has been great to work with. And I really wish, what I call the Derry lads, the best of luck because they work as hard as anyone else in the country but you come to a ground like this here and get turned over like that, it's absolutely brutal
McIver wasn't the only manager to step down, as Tipperary manager Peter Creedon resigning after his side's loss to Tyrone earlier in the day.
See Also: Liam Casey Decides To USe Tyrone Player As A Carpet
Picture credit: Oliver McVeigh / SPORTSFILE
