Cooney calls for wait-and-see attitude to new rules

GAA president Christy Cooney has asked hurling and football inter-county managers to reserve their judgements on the latest batch of experimental rules.

Cooney was addressed a gathering of managers at a specially-convened meeting in Croke Park on Tuesday night where the raft of changes was discussed, two weeks into the new season.

Inter-county bosses have had a major say in similar experiments before, especially with the ‘sin bin’ tryout which was abandoned in 2006, though statistics demonstrated that fouls had decreased while scores had been on the up when it was utilised.

Liam O’Neill, who was chairman of the disciplinary task force which was about to introduce another set of disciplinary codes for last year’s league, said 13 months ago that it had been managers who had “pulled (the sin bin trial) down”.

The latest new rules have met with a mixed reaction from players, managers and commentators alike thus far and that cross-section of opinion was mirrored on Tuesday evening.

The meeting, predictably, centred on the restrictions on the hand pass, the introduction of the mark and the relaxation of the square ball regulation and it is believed to have lasted for more than two-and-a-half hours.

Each new rule will be debated and voted on individually by Annual Congress in April, by which time they will have been in operation for the national leagues in hurling and football.

Some of the country’s best known managers, including Mickey Harte and Brian Cody, were in attendance but the timing of the gathering was criticised by a number of their counterparts who were contacted yesterday.

“Having it on a Tuesday night was ridiculous,” said one manager who could not attend. “Everyone knows that the majority of teams train on Tuesday and Thursday nights so I don’t know what they were thinking.”

Meanwhile, Offaly manager Tom Cribben will have to wait until the end of February before he knows whether he has secured the services of Dublin-born brothers John and Niall Coughlan. The St Sylvester siblings represented the capital at minor and U21 levels but are, under GAA rules, eligible to play for Offaly because of the midland county’s failure to win a senior provincial title in the last 10 years. Their connection with the Faithful County is a strong one with their extended family still living in Cloghan near the Galway border.

Their uncle, Eugene Coughlan, won All-Ireland hurling medals with Offaly in 1981 and 1985 and their cousin Sean Ryan is currently a member of Cribben’s panel which will compete in Division Three of the NFL this year.

The Offaly board have already been in contact with their Dublin counterparts concerning the switch and a decision will be made at a meeting of the Dublin county board next month.

Offaly are confident of receiving the green light from the Dublin officials as the brothers will still be permitted to represent St Sylvester’s in Dublin while togging out for Offaly.

Should they get the go-ahead, they would be available for the round three meeting at home to Roscommon in mid-March. Both brothers were members of the DIT Sigerson Cup panel last year. John, who spent a short time on the senior Dublin panel, started in the final defeat to Cork IT while Niall came on as a substitute.

They were in action for DIT again yesterday in the first round of this year’s Sigerson competition when UCC defeated their Dublin counterparts after extra-time at the Mardyke.