Carlow manager Turlough O'Brien has described the 12 week ban imposed on Dublin's Diarmuid Connolly as 'outrageous'.

O'Brien had a ring side seat for the St Vincent's ace's altercation with linesmen Ciaran Branagan during the Barrowsiders Leinster SFC quarter-final clash with the Dubs in O'Moore Park and he gave his version of events when he appeared as a guest on Newstalk's Off the Ball today.

"My view at the time was that it was a Dublin line ball, first of all. And, the linesman flagged it for Carlow. Diarmuid Connolly didn't realise he had flagged it for Carlow. He'd gone to retrieve the ball.

"Our guys saw the flag our way so they went to get the ball from Diarmuid and it ended up a bit of a wrestling match and it just escalated a little bit and look, he had a few words with the linesman and he did put his hand on him but the disciplinary rules need an overhaul. 

"The suspension is too extreme for what happened. I had a lot of sympathy for him to be honest with you. Certainly he needed to be reprimanded in someway but a 12 week suspension for that is outrageous."

O'Brien added: "My take on a lot of this is when referees send players off for an incident, they often write up the report by looking at the rule book first instead of describing what happened...and you can end up being charged with the more serious offence and once he does that - that's your suspension cast in stone...we'd be better to have three or four citing commissioners to look at an incident after a game, make a ruling on it and that's the end of it."

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