Rules trial must mean something

LEAGUE IS IDEAL TESTING GROUND SAYS GAA CHAIR

THE GAA have robustly defended the decision to trial a raft of experimental rules in the 2019 Football League.

Derry native David Hassan, chair of the GAA’S Standing Committee on Playing Rules and a lecturer at Ulster University, presented the rules at Croke Park yesterday.

They will be introduced in the pre-season competitions next month and, controversially, the League, which gets underway from the end of the January.

Many high profile GAA figures, Carlow boss Turlough O’brien among them, have argued that the League is too important to be a testing ground.

However, Hassan countered: “If these experimental rules would have the effect that we hope they would have, then they have to be trialled at intercounty level and they have to be trialled over a period of time and they have to be trialled in competitions that mean something.

“I think there’s 162 games and our role now will be to identify minimally 25 per cent of those games that will be subject to quite detailed analysis in the same way we have the analysis dating back now seven years.

“We’ll have a data set from before, a data set as a result of the intervention and then we’ll know what the conclusions are. So we don’t have any predetermined outcomes. We’ll just analyse the data and make recommendations, which is the object of the process.”

The decision to limit the handpass to a maximum of three in succession has drawn most criticism, with a GPA survey reporting that 96 per cent of its members polled on that issue weren’t in favour.

But Hassan argued: “Many of the people commenting were either playing or managing teams in 2011. That’s where the data starts from.

“Almost nine times out of 10, a handpassing sequence in 2011 lasted no more than three consecutive hand passes. In other words, there was no need at that point to restrict it in number.”

Although he envisages a “rocky transition”, Hassan believes it will challenge the thought processes of footballers, for which he says “the handpass is almost becoming a reflex response to receiving the ball”.

It was planned to seriously overhaul the kickout too but, after trial games, that was watered down to the extent that now the only change in that regard will see goalkeepers restarting the play from the 20m, rather than 13m, line.

Hassan added: “We had the original proposal which you could understand as a zoning plus kickout. We trialled that. It didn’t work.

“So we took that off the table. That left us with the kick-out beyond the 45. There were again difficulties with that.

“Was the ball clearing the 45? Referees again found it difficult to judge that. Even at Central Council meeting on Saturday, it was raised a few times, how applicable it was at all levels?

“Was it possible in all such instances for a ‘keeper to clear the 45? We couldn’t be sure.”