Much maligned sin bin to remain for National League

THE rules experimentation in subsidiary competitions will continue in the upcoming Allianz National League competitions, which begin with the meeting of Cork and Kerry footballers under lights at Páirc Ui Rinn on Friday week.

While it will be a priority to identify more clearly the specific fouls which lead to players being instantly sin-binned, the Chairman of the Football Task Force, Tommy Moran insisted yesterday that there was no question of abandoning the experiment.

"There has been a lot of negative reaction, but you have to take an overall view,'' said Mr. Moran, the current Connacht Chairman. "It would be wrong to condemn the rule changes simply because people do not immediately agree with them.

"We set out to try and eliminate off-the-ball fouling, deliberate fouling, pulling down players and blocking the runs of players. People are saying we will make a pansy's game out of it, but not at all! We have been complaining

for years about negative fouling. At least we are trying to do something about it now."

The Football Rules Task Force convened in Dublin last night for a review meeting that had been planned from the outset - and, according to the Chairman, certainly not in response to criticism directed at the experiment. However, it was explained that no decisions could be taken at the meeting in relation to possible alterations. This will require discussions with the Hurling Task Force and then consideration by the Management Committee, who will meet at the end of next week.

In response to a question, Mr Moran said he would be in favour of a system which would penalise players who received single yellow cards in consecutive games. Under the present rules, there is no penalty stipulated.

In response to fairly widespread dissatisfaction with the sin-bin, he suggested that people were a little confused about what was involved. "There are specific fouls for which you are sin-binned. We are considering publishing a list of the offences for which a yellow card is immediately issued as we feel it could be very helpful to managers and the media.''

From his own perspective, he said he was pleased with the progress to date. He had attended two FBD games, which may not have been as competitive as the games, involving Laois, Dublin and Meath, but 'went off very well.' "The first half of the Roscommon/Sligo IT game had only 13 frees. I don't know when I was at a match before when there were that few. On Sunday I was at the Clare/Leitrim game, where there were two sin-binnings but very few frees, so the players are beginning to take notice."