O’Neill: 20-metre ruling won’t change outcome

GAA president Liam O’Neill insists the chances of powerful hurling freetakers scoring a goal from a placed ball outside the 20-metre line are as good as converting one within it.

O’Neill expressed relief on the grounds of safety that all penalties and 20m frees must be struck prior to the 20m line.

Indeed, within the 20m line is officially an exclusion zone for frees at all levels in hurling as a meeting of inter-county referees on Tuesday night learned. The directive they’ve been given from Central Council is that no freetaker is permitted to lift the ball from any free past the 20m line.

With penalties now being hit further from the goal, the prospect of more cynical frees would appear to have increased and referees chief Pat McEnaney yesterday described the new rule as “not ideal”.

However, O’Neill points to Patrick Horgan’s goals from a 22m free and a penalty on Sunday as enough proof to suggest concerns about conversion rates dropping are misplaced.

“He just had to make sure he hit it before the 20m line. The method wasn’t changed. The distance from which he executed it changed slightly. Wasn’t it interesting that both of those frees were scored after all the talk? The skill is still there. I’d contend that somebody who has a strong shot is equally effective from 20 metres as inside.”

Croke Park had caused confusion with the reference in their press release last week to all frees having to be struck from before or where they were awarded.

But O’Neill maintains he is satisfied the game has been made safer by the new rule interpretation.

“We’re actually at the point now where we wanted to be before Congress. The situation as it is now is what Páraic [Duffy] and I wanted all along. Sometimes you don’t get your way, sometimes it takes longer to achieve something.

“We weren’t getting the support for Congress. We felt that. Anyway, there was a technical difficulty with the motion. It came from the standing committee on playing rules.

“We tried to do it at Central Council but certain counties said they were going to take it all the way if we did.

“Then we had the situation where the game took place in Thurles and the Waterford goalie putting his own particular interpretation on things. We felt we could do it with the set of circumstances after that game. What was open to us was to interpret the rule and we’ve interpreted it. We’ve had the 100% backing of our management committee and almost the complete backing of Central Council.

“We’re at a stage now where the game is safe again, where our rules are being applied. The rule that’s there is the rule that is in the rulebook anyway. The difficulty wasn’t that we changed the rule back from what it was to disadvantage anyone. We’re actually implementing what was in the rulebook.”

O’Neill also re-emphasised his backing for the black card despite recent misinterpretations of such cynical fouls by referees.

“As far as I am concerned the black card was the right thing to do. The organisation voted strongly for it, we have it now and I think it is working well in the first year.

“Players make errors, linesmen make errors, umpires make errors, in the World Cup there have been errors. That happens. I’d prefer to focus on the positives out of it and I think it has made a significant difference already and will continue to do so.”

O’Neill has also called for another debate on the possibility of reintroducing the Tommy Murphy Cup after Carlow’s 28-point humiliation at the hands of Meath last Sunday.

“As somebody who was county secretary, I did question when I was Laois secretary whether the qualifiers were of value when you know you haven’t got a team that are going to win the All-Ireland.

“Quite honestly all the qualifiers are a means to get to the final stages but when you haven’t got the team, I would, on a personal level, question the value of it. I think the Tommy Murphy Cup was probably done away with prematurely.”

Of Carlow, he said: “There is not a huge incentive for them to train for the qualifiers, let’s be honest about it. I know that Carlow, ahead of last Sunday’s defeat, had already started to work with the Leinster Council on their underage programmes.

“Carlow will always have resource difficulty, they have a limited population, they have only 24 clubs and not all of them are football.”