Anthony Daly: Six steps a no-brainer but handpass and puckout rule changes need tweak
Limerick goalkeeper Nickie Quaid gets a handpass away with a clear striking action. Photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
When I was interviewed for a StreamSport launch earlier this week, a number of the questions naturally focused on the proposed new rules set to be trialled by John Meyler’s expert advisory committee. And before I provided some of those answers, I took my mind back to what I’m seeing, and have seen, as a coach with the current Clarecastle Intermediate team.
Now that details of the proposed new rules have been released, I’m still trying to form my opinion from my experience on the training field, and being as close to the action as I possibly can be at this stage of my life.
For example, when we were training on Tuesday night, we were doing a drill whereby we – as in all the management – were really policing proper handpassing technique during a possession game. When I pulled one fella for a throw, he swore blind that he didn’t foul the ball. My response was that I was putting myself in the position of the referee and, as far as I was concerned, I couldn’t see any clear striking action, or clear separation between his hand and the ball. So it had, and has, to be a free.
The proposed new experimental rule change does place the onus firmly on the player now “to ensure the handpass is struck with a clear and definite action of the hand”. That is what coaches have always been saying anyway, but policing it will be easier for referees now that their workload has been reduced when teams will not be permitted to complete two consecutive handpasses.
Teams will have to improvise to deal with that restriction but it does increase the risk of chaos. I could understand limiting it to two or three handpasses but I just think one is too restrictive. Teams are coached too smartly now not to be able to go after the player in possession and hunt him down if he’s in a tight spot.
It's important to mention that these rules are only being trialled and that all of them are at least worth looking at. Some of them are no-brainers, especially the rule alteration where a player will be permitted to carry the ball in hand for a maximum of six consecutive steps, two more than previously, or to hold the ball for no longer than the time needed to take six steps. It just makes more sense than a minimum of four steps.
That will be easier for the referee to monitor but I can’t see how redefining the tackle to prevent players from holding an opponent with their arm as well as their hand can make life easier for the men in black. That’s already a minefield, but nobody wants the physicality taken out of the game. A foul is a foul, I just think we need to give the referees more autonomy on making that decision as opposed to introducing more technical detail that may end up confusing them and everyone else.
Stuff like throw-ins taking place between one player from each team, along with all other throw-ins having to be contested by a player from each side with all other players having to remain 13m away from the contest, where those competing in the throw-in must clash for the ball with a ground stroke, make good sense because of how it reduces numbers around the ball.
When I was asked last week about puckouts, I felt that all six forwards should be forced to remain inside the ’65 for all puckouts. What Meyler’s group are looking at now is that puck-outs must clear the 45m line before the defending team can touch the ball and three players from each team must remain between the 45m and 20m lines.
That’s not what I would have gone for because, while it will definitely remove short puckouts, I can’t see how it’s going to reduce mass bunching under the ball. I don’t see that rule sticking anyway.
One of the suggestions I did make in that StreamSport interview was moving the 65-metre free puck back to the halfway line, but the committee have shifted it further back again to the opposite 65. I don’t think it will spark a return to the 1950s and 1960s, when you’d rarely see a ’65 scored, but it will definitely slow down the conversion rate. On the other hand, scoring numbers will increase with two points awarded for sideline cuts.
After harping on in these pages, and in our Irish Examiner podcast for the last three years about goalscoring criteria around the black card rule, it’s about time that cynically denying a goalscoring opportunity has been updated. It just had to be.
The advantage rule change, which will allow a team whose player has been fouled during the five-second advantage period to take a free from the location of the initial foul or any thereafter, is also a smart move – especially when those five seconds can be extended by the referee to allow for a score attempt taken in that timeframe.
Everyone will be delighted with the return of the maor foirne because of how fast the game is and how hard it is to get a message into players. It’s impossible in a packed Croke Park but it is also a major issue in club games played at county grounds when officials are watching your every move on the sideline like a gang of hawks.
Now that these rules are being trialled in third level Division One league games later this year, I hope that some of those matches can be shown free-to-air by respected companies like TG4, StreamSport and Clubber, and subsidised by the GAA. I understand that these are low-profile games in comparison to other big clubs matches that will take precedence around that time, but the public will need to get a proper look at them to make a decent judgement on the impact and effect they might have on the game. I think that’s even more important when most of those third-level league matches take place midweek.
People, especially hurling people, have always been averse to rule changes. We’re not where Gaelic football was but if these experimental changes make the game better, it will be like winning the lotto for supporters. We already have a brilliant product. If it can be made even better, hallelujah.
