It goes without saying, I suppose, that the actions of referees are going to attract more attention at this stage of the season but, even allowing for this, it does seem that the league's men in black have been having a rough time of things these past few weeks.

It's a particular pity that Finn Harps will go into the summer wondering what might have been had the taking of last week's penalty kick at Tolka Park been handled differently. It will be a far more serious matter, though, if St Patrick's Athletic end up regarding a decision in Cork a few weeks ago as having deprived them of the league title. The referee's call was to award them a penalty instead of playing the advantage which would have, within a second or two, resulted in a goal.

That decision, by Hugh Byrne, almost certainly cost St Patrick's two points and it was only one of many examples we have seen over the past couple of months of referees here failing utterly to play the advantage rule in the way that they are supposed to.

We have seen poor decision-making in many of the biggest games played since Christmas. Neither Byrne nor John Feighery (another man to be allocated a large number of high-profile matches recently) seem inclined to let games flow at all.

Another, even more obvious, problem is the punishment, sometimes by issuing of cards, for what have appeared to be perfectly good challenges. Some of the errors have been, at the last few games I have seen, fairly embarrassing. The frustration of players, who have often been punished for their protests, is something that is very easy to understand.

The first FAI Cup game between Harps and Shelbourne at Ballybofey provided perfect examples of the sort of things that have been going on. First Jonathon Minnock and then Greg Costello were booked late on in the game after what appeared to be perfectly legitimate challenges (Costello was, in fact, without doubt the player to have been fouled in the second of the incidents). In both cases the players protested their innocence and made their feelings about the decision clear. In each case the player was shown a yellow card for nothing more than reacting to a poor decision.

At Sligo the next day, in the match between Sligo Rovers and St Patrick's, where Paul McKeon was in charge, the home side could have had a first-half penalty when Packie Lynch hauled Aled Rowlands back by the shirt well inside the box but the Rovers player didn't even look for it, knowing presumably that that sort of thing almost always goes entirely unpunished in this league.

Then, last Tuesday, in the Shelbourne-Finn Harps replay, at Tolka Park, Dick O'Hanlon appeared to completely lose the plot, and that's even before we consider the infamous penalty incident.

From the opening minutes of the game there were a series of bizarre decisions, corners instead of kick-outs, throws given the wrong way, that sort of thing. Perhaps O'Hanlon should have been positioned well enough to see what had happened or, failing that, maybe his linesmen should have been in a position to let him know (on a couple of occasions, to be fair, he appeared to overrule them) but failing that, I suppose, if he couldn't do anything else he just had to go with his best estimate of what had happened.

When Dessie Baker went down looking for a free midway through the first half O'Hanlon had a clearcut choice. Baker was either brought down by Stuart Gauld or he dived. It was either a Shelbourne free and probably a yellow card for the defender or a throw in and definitely a booking for the Dubliner. What we got was a throw in and nothing more.

Shortly after the penalty Pascal Vaudequin was booked for what most people were agreed afterwards was a perfectly good tackle on Mark Rutherford; I didn't see the challenge well enough to judge it, but it was what followed that was interesting. After showing the Frenchman the card the referee was clearly shoved backwards by the player. It went way beyond what either Minnock or Costello had done in the first match and should have resulted in a sending off. But it didn't and, as it turned out, it wasn't the last time that Harps were to benefit from O'Hanlon's reluctance to stack the odds any higher against them - both Vaudequin and James Mulligan might have been dismissed later in the game.

As for that penalty - scored by Shelbourne's Stephen Geoghegan - well there are quite a few views going around on what exactly happened and who deserved what. The fact is, however, that Law 14 of the games states that the goalkeeper "remains on his goal line, facing the kicker" until the kick has been taken and that the referee "does not signal for a penalty kick to be taken until the players have taken up position in accordance with the Law". In the circumstances, it seems that Jody Byrne may well have deserved to be booked for his messing about, that Geoghegan was perfectly entitled to act as he did and that, ultimately, justice was done - but it does not seem that the referee did the job he was meant to.

Most of the criticisms levelled at the referees after the three cup matches between St Patrick's and Shelbourne were unjustified. But if, on the big occasions, our best umpires can't be depended upon to apply the laws of the game or allow play to flow then it can hardly come as much of a surprise when managers, point an accusing finger.

Real tragedy came visiting the Irish soccer world late last week. Sports reporter Adam Dunphy was only 27 when he died in tragic circumstances near his Killiney home on Thursday night. One of the nicest, most friendly and generous of people to become involved in a profession that is all too often tinged with egotism, bitterness and jealousy, he will be fondly remembered by his many friends and colleagues. Most of all, though, he'll be sadly missed.