Mulvihill wants pick-up outlawed

THE clean pick-up in football should not be introduced to the rules on the basis that it’s potentially dangerous.

GAA Director-General Liam Mulvihill felt compelled to issue this warning in his annual report for Congress.

“I have been surprised at the amount of cases of players ‘diving’ in to try to get possession. My concern would be that if you had two players coming from different directions and diving in for the ball it could cause a very serious injury.

“The pick-up done by the player when he’s standing over the ball is fine, but it’s legislating for the guy who throws himself on the ground and attempts to punch the ball away is the problem,” he said.

With two different motions down for debate (one supporting the present experiment, the other limiting it), Mr Mulvihill said this was “a safety issue” and that he felt it incumbent on him to mention it.

“I hadn’t seen any comment in the media on the safety aspect, which surprised me. Everybody was saying it was working well. The only help is that it saves the referee from having to adjudicate as to whether the ball is on the ground or not!”

Dealing with football overall, he writes about the “malaise” of personal fouling that was “endemic” in the game. It was typified by the difficulty of the player in possession being surrounded by players hitting him on all parts of the body with their hands. “Is this within the rules of the game?” he asks. “I believe that the game could be cleaned up by applying the existing rules, if we have the will to do so. However, we must be brave enough to persist with the implementation of decisions and not allow ourselves to be deflected or cowed by the inevitable outcry,” he adds.

And, while he notes that the number of football club affiliations is at an all-time high - at 12,686 - there has been “some slippage” in the basic skills of catching and kicking.

“This can be attributed to a preoccupation with maintaining possession and the over reliance on hand-passing as a means of doing so.

“Be that as it may, the simple reality is that teams which adopt a direct style of play generally do best. Statistics indicate that teams can expect to be most successful when kicking dominates hand-passing by a ration of 3:1. To encourage this trend, a strong case can be made for the use of modified playing rules at all under-age levels so players are encouraged and rewarded for their ability to catch and kick.”

Mr Mulvihill is also concerned on the disciplinary front, saying that after repeated warnings, there was “proof positive” this year that there is a major problem at every level.

“The tendency when there is a major breach is to attack those who publicise it, but we cannot hide the fact that there were too many instances where acts were committed which should not be associated with our games.

“The problem will only be eradicated when all our members accept that it is a problem and agree to change their attitude. We are all too inclined to listen to the hard luck story and to allow persistent offenders numerous further chances, whereas other sports would not tolerate such abuses.”

Mr Mulvihill was asked why the GAA did not defend cases taken to court, to which he replied that each case was viewed on its merits.

“If a player is seeking to have a decision overturned, he goes for an interlocutory injunction. There is an immediacy of a game coming up and that’s the whole basis on which the courts grant a right for a temporary injunction. A judge has to make a decision very, very quickly on the basis of a brief case put to him in writing by both sides.

“When an injunction is granted, the player is able to play. The whole purpose of the injunction has then been removed, and there is no wish on the part of the player to have any further part of the case dealt with. From the GAA’s point of view it’s going to cost a lot of money to go back to court to have the case heard and it’s purely a Phyrric victory. It doesn’t make sense and it does cost a lot of money and there would be a feeling that there would be a witch-hunt involved.

“It can take up to 12 months to have a case heard in the courts and that’s another argument in favour of the tribunal system that we are introducing - a system, which will make it unnecessary to seek an injunction.”

Mr Mulvihill also warns of referee shortages, pointing out that while their intercounty programme has virtually doubled, they have been more or less operating with the same panel, from which a number of high-profile referees have recently retired.