Duffy urges Congress delegates to vote through new rules

Sligo referee Marty Duffy has urged GAA delegates to vote through the GAA’s experimental rules for football when they come up for debate at the Annual Congress in Down on Saturday week.

Should the rules get the green light it would be a break from tradition, as it is rare for any set of experimental rules to see life past their trial period of the January competitions and National leagues.

“Overall they have been a good thing - in my opinion it's been a good thing for the game. It hasn't made the referee's job any different really,” he said.

“I think the players and the management bought into the likes of the mark and the hand pass and the square ball, they were the three big ones really from a footballing point of view. And all have worked well.”

Duffy and Cork hurling official Diarmuid Kirwan were yesterday honoured with the Vodafone GAA Referee of the Year awards, and the Enniscrone native rubbishes suggestions that the ‘mark rule’ is contentious.

“Ah, no, no, no, if anything the mark has helped. Basically now when somebody catches the ball clean now they come down and expect their free. The opposing team get on with it because they have a job to do.

“If anything I've found there's less melee type things happening. As soon as the guy comes down with the ball everyone is nearly scattering around him straight away. So you have less to actually adjudicate on at that stage.”

However Duffy says that it should be up to the players to decide whether to take the mark, or use advantage.

“Originally when it started I was disappointed to be honest that it wasn't left to the player to decide. As I say, it has worked very well and in cases where there's clear advantage most referees have got the hang of it and are letting guys go.”

“I don't think there have been too many complaints over the last few rounds - the first few rounds there are always going to be problems.”

On the issue of ending the game when the ball goes over the end-line or sideline, Duffy is happy to enshrine the rule as it stands into the Official Guide.

“If you look at it again, the one or two cases where there was a problem have been honed in on. But like the majority of games it's been an advantage and everybody knows how it's going to work. So I don't think it's been a problem. Again, just a few incidents have been looked at.”

The sales representative has used the countdown clock in his time as a ladies football referee and believes that while the introduction of the clock to the men's game is a good idea, he has seen cases in the ladies code of ‘running down the clock’, which are of concern to him.

“My one problem is that incidental time wasting, it's very hard to add that on to the clock.

“You get managers and teams, they know exactly what they're doing, they know exactly how to waste time. Whereas in men's football you can say: 'The 'keeper is doing that on a regular basis. 30 seconds' or you could say to somebody: 'That's 30 seconds extra'.

“With the clock you can't do that. It goes unpunished.”