Hooters in place amid countdown to Congress debate

Permanent clocks with hooters are being installed in every principal county GAA venue — despite a Central Council motion calling for them to be scrapped before they are put into use in the time-keeping of championship games this year. 

A two-thirds majority will be required at Congress in Cavan on Saturday to prevent the system coming into operation for this year’s Sam Maguire and Liam MacCarthy Cups.

Dublin’s Parnell Park and Meath’s Páirc Tailteann are just two stadiums where the mechanism has already been put in place this month.

Central Council have proposed the clock/hooter plans be disbanded because of a number of concerns raised during trials. However, the initiative has twice been backed by Congress — in 2010 in the form of a Wexford proposal and then in 2013 as a Football Review Committee recommendation.

The GAA’s director of games administration and player welfare Feargal McGill, who supervised the trials at the beginning and end of last year, explained the new clocks had been ordered and installed with a mind to being used this year as had been scheduled.

“Obviously, there was a motion passed for the public clock to come into operation and we have continued to put them in,” he said. “It’s not an issue.

“Whether it comes in or not after Congress, upgrading our clocks and scoreboards is something we would have liked to do.

"The public clock will be available for ladies football at the venues anyway and they can use it rather than the mobile public clocks that they have been using. What’s going on isn’t related to the success or failure of the motion.”

Meath secretary Francis Flynn confirmed Páirc Tailteann is now in receipt of the mechanism but said the county had not yet decided whether to support the motion calling for it not to be used in this year’s championships.

“We’re going to listen to the arguments and decide on the day,” he said of the vote in the Slieve Russell Hotel this weekend.

“Some people think it’s a good idea; some think it’s a terrible one. We’re going to wait and see what comes out of the debate.”

However, Dublin will be supporting the motion to axe the clocks being utilised this summer. New chairman Sean Shanley said it was “strange” grounds like Parnell Park now had the new facility.

“After a few trial runs, there has been problems,” he remarked.

“We’ll be listening to the debate but with the rules as they are, we’d be against it being used. The main problem seems to be when the hooter goes, the ball then has to go out of play. There’d then be a tendency to hold onto the ball.”

Dublin’s stance is in contrast to their football manager Jim Gavin, who is wholly supportive of the system becoming a live feature in championship games.

There had been conjecture about a game in the pre-Christmas trials when it was suggested a team, leading by two points, kicked the ball over their own bar to end the game after the hooter had sounded.

McGill dismissed that story but revealed he was approached by managers about the legitimacy of doing so if the scenario arose.

“It never happened but I was asked about it by managers of two different teams. Under the protocol at the moment, of course it could be done to end a game. I explained to people afterwards that this is what you were likely to face from management teams.”

McGill’s report outlines six concerns about the clock hooter, including negative possession to kill the clock, overanalysis of time taken in deadball situations and deliberate concession of line balls.