Handpass ‘fad’ gets thumbs up from FRC

It has been labelled the ultimate of all evils in modern Gaelic football but the Football Review Committee (FRC) has neglected to restrict the number or nature of hand-passes in the belief that its prevalence is no more than a fad.

That the handpass exercises so many minds was evidenced yet again at yesterday’s briefing when a considerable chunk of the time was focused on the issue but the research undertaken by the FRC persuaded them to, ultimately, let nature take its own course.

Chairman Eugene McGee detailed how Kildare had championed its use in the 1920s and Antrim two decades later, how it had re-emerged as the height of fashion in the 1970s and again since the new millennium with Donegal’s use of the tactic in 2011 put forward as the height of the apocalypse.