Black card the great imponderable

“No use in asking — the answer is nobody knows.”

The lyrics of Paul Brady’s song flashed before me over the weekend as GAA Congress voted on rule variations to improve Gaelic football. Congress was voting on the theory and in a vacuum as no one knows how the new laws will affect the game in 2014. Will the black card and other variations really improve football? Are the fans in for a feast of entertainment as free-flowing high-scoring games become the norm? At this point, there’s no use in asking...

The Football Review Committee (FRC), with all members being highly respected and genuinely interested in saving and improving inter-county football, toiled for eight months to table a package of changes they genuinely believed in. So in their wisdom, why didn’t the GAA authorities, who brought their considerable influence behind the FRC efforts, arrange to trial these rule variations in this year’s championship as a package?