‘Sin-bin’ proposal gets red card

THE proposal to ‘sin-bin’ a Gaelic footballer who has picked up a second yellow card has been dropped by the committee charged with overseeing a raft of experiments which are being put before Central Council next week.

A 10-minute sin-bin for black-carded players will remain, however, as one of five proposals being put before the decision-making body.

Incorporating double yellowcarded players in a sin-bin, part of the original proposals published last month, proved contentious as it was quite a scaling down from the red card that currently applies.

Having had extensive consultation with managers, players, referees and refereeing development officials, the body charged with overseeing the experiments, the Standing Playing Rules Committee, concluded that it could potentially lead to an increase in fouling.

Limiting the number of substitutes to five because of this change will remain.

ALL five original proposals will be put before Central Council but one of the other four has also undergone extensive alteration.

Instead of requiring just two players from each team to be within the two 45s when a kick-out is being taken, a kick-out from the 20-metre line – the new re-start point – will just have to cross the 45-metre line.

As it stands, kick-outs are taken from the 13-metre line and must cross the 20-metre line.

The other three proposals, restricting handpasses to just three in succession; a requirement for all sideline kicks to go forward unless they are within 20 metres of either end line; and a mark inside the 20-metre line, provided the kick has been taken from outside the 45-metre line, will all remain as originally envisaged.

In a supporting document circulated to Central Council delegates, the committee outlined how their latest findings were based on consultation and nine games, at schools and colleges level, in which the five proposals were trialled.

If passed, the proposals will be ‘live’ for pre-season tournaments which commence in Leinster and possibly Ulster next month and the league which gets under way in January.

The retention of a red-card sanction for a player picking up two yellows will give the sin-bin proposal a much better chance of surviving, as will the removal of the kick-out reset that would allow just four players in the middle third for a kick-out.

The restriction on consecutive handpasses has drawn mixed opinion but the committee based it on soundings from county boards gathered during the summer and statistics provided by analyst Rob Carroll who looked at 322 games between 2011 and 2018 to detect trends.

Carroll found that there was a significant increase in the average number of handpasses, more than 100 per game, from 251 to 359.