‘I don’t know if they even played the game’ – Monaghan star Hughes labels proposed new football rules as ‘embarrassing’
RORY BEGGAN grants a postmatch interview but he’s also in a hurry to get into Scotstown’s celebration photograph in Clones, so he’s not in the form to hang around.
Beggan wants to take his place in the shot of the team that won four Monaghan SFC titles in a row but before he runs off to be with his team-mates, he has time to give an emphatic – if brief – answer to one of the new rules proposed for football.
Beggan offers a simple but emphatic “no” when asked about the new proposal around the kickout that states the ball must go beyond the 45m line, where just four players, two from each side, would be stationed.
The All-Star nominee is one of the finest exponents of the restart in the game along with Stephen Cluxton.
With distance no problem to the Monaghan stopper and swathes of space to hit, it could be argued that that regulation would play to Beggan’s strengths. However, he just doesn’t fancy it.
His club and county team-mate Darren Hughes goes much further, labelling all of the proposals, with the exception of the possible introduction of the offensive mark, as “embarrassing”.
“It’s embarrassing for some of that rules committee that some of that went to print,” Hughes said of the proposals.
“There’s no logic to it at all. I don’t know if they even played the game. It was embarrassing to even read it. But for them to sit down and waste time, and to let that go to print…
“The only one (advantage) that I
could potentially see going in is the mark inside. And I had said that before.”
It was put to Hughes that the offensive mark might have worked favourably for the Ballybay team they had just beaten in St Tiernach’s Park.
Late in the day, the evergreen Paul Finlay made two brilliant catches in front of the Scotstown goal from long deliveries but they couldn’t engineer a score from either play.
“I think that is the only one that could potentially work,” Hughes agreed. “The sin-bin, I mean, we tried it before and it worked and then they got rid of it for no reason.
“I read the first couple of lines about the kick-out and everybody having to stay outside the lines of the 45-metre lines but I don’t understand it at all.”
The proposals will go through a consultation process but early signs are that they will meet stiff opposition before the GAA’s management committee decide, which, if any, of the new proposals to adopt.
It seems they will garner little in the way of support in Scotstown, the club of former GAA director-general Páraic Duffy. The club’s manager Kieran Donnelly, who worked as a coach of the Fermanagh footballers under Peter Canavan, doesn’t take quite the same hard line as his captain.
However, he’s not convinced the game needs as radical an overhaul as is being proposed.
“I admire them trying something different, even to the extent of trying to encourage high catching, but with only four men in that zone, of course the ’keeper’s going to hit it into pockets, never mind if there’s a bit of a breeze,” Donnelly said.
“Personally, I don’t think it has to change. If a team feels they’re good enough they can be more responsive in their style.
“If you feel you have a chance, you will be more expansive and hold a higher line on the pitch.
“That would be my general view on it. I wouldn’t tweak it at all.”
That is not Donnelly’s immediate concern. Scotstown face an Ulster club SFC clash with Fermanagh champions Derrygonnelly who themselves have won four in a row.
“Both teams are quite similar. Derrygonnelly have won the four in a row and we have done the same.
“They are an excellent team, I watched them last week. They are physically imposing, well drilled and well organised and a great club as well, so now we have our work cut out against them.
“Both teams will be similar in their approach. Last year they should have been in an Ulster club final and should have beaten Cavan Gaels (in the semi-final) here. They beat an Armagh Harps team that came out of Armagh too, so we know its a tough task ahead.”