Pádraig Hughes is a

Gaelic football Gaelic football (; short name '')'', commonly known as simply Gaelic, GAA, or football, is an Irish team sport. A form of football, it is played between two teams of 15 players on a rectangular grass pitch. The objective of the sport is to score ...

referee from

Armagh Armagh ( ; , , " Macha's height") is a city and the county town of County Armagh, in Northern Ireland, as well as a civil parish. It is the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland – the seat of the Archbishops of Armagh, the Primates of All ...

. He is a regular member of the

Gaelic Athletic Association The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA; ; CLG) is an Irish international amateur sports, amateur sporting and cultural organisation, focused primarily on promoting indigenous Gaelic games and pastimes, which include the traditional Irish sports o ...

's Championship Panels for

inter-county Inter-county, is Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) List of Gaelic games terminology, terminology which refers to competitions or matches between County (Gaelic games), counties, as used in Gaelic games (differently from legal counties). The term c ...

games. Hughes injured himself against Eamonn Doherty when he was officiating the

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

game in

Ballybofey Ballybofey ( , ; ) is a town located on the south bank of the River Finn (County Donegal), River Finn, County Donegal, Ireland. Together with the smaller town of Stranorlar on the north side of the River Finn (County Donegal), River Finn, the ...

in the 2013 National Football League and he had to be stretchered off of the field. The injury was so bad that he was ruled out of the 2013 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship, and Down's Ciarán Brannigan was brought in to replace him. Hughes officiated the 2014 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final, which saw Donegal face Kerry. He gave Kerry a second-half penalty against Cork in the 2015 Munster Senior Football Championship final. The Cork County Board put out an "unprecedented" statement 29 days later criticising his decision, but later apologised to him. Speaking on '' The Sunday Game'' at the time, Joe Brolly criticised Hughes for his decision, and, writing in the ''

Irish Examiner The ''Irish Examiner'', formerly ''The Cork Examiner'' and then ''The Examiner'', is an Republic of Ireland, Irish national daily newspaper which primarily circulates in the Munster region surrounding its base in Cork (city), Cork, though it is ...

'', former referee

John Bannon John Charles Bannon (7 May 1943 – 13 December 2015) was an Australian politician and academic. He was the 39th Premier of South Australia, leading the Australian Labor Party (South Australian Branch), South Australian Branch of the Australia ...

suggested it was a harsh decision.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hughes, Padraig Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Gaelic football referees