'It makes sense': Cork's Ian Maguire supports sin-bin over black card

Cork midfielder Ian Maguire supports three of the proposed football rule changes but has concerns over the recommendation relating to kickouts.

The Cork captain, part of the St Finbarr’s team bidding to secure a first county senior football title in 33 years on Sunday, has backed the introduction of a 10-minute sin-bin for players who commit a black card offence. The 24-year has also given a thumbs up to expanding the parameters of the mark and the proposal whereby sideline kicks must go in a forward direction.

“The sin-bin for the second yellow or black card makes sense,” said Maguire.

“With regard to the black card, I feel if you are losing a player so early in the game because of one tackle, it is a bit steep.”

He added: “I like the idea of the mark for the inside forward. Now, I do fear that is touching on Aussie Rules, though.

Maguire appreciates that having just four players between the 45-metre lines, when play resumes following a score or wide, would mean far less traffic when contesting restarts, but believes this proposed rule change unfairly targets goalkeepers who have mastered the short kick-out. A strong wind, he points out, would negate a rule that a player on the defending team cannot play the ball until the kick-out has crossed the 45-metre line.

“When we played Louth in the league, there was a gale-force wind and the goalkeeper couldn’t get the ball to the ‘45. How do you get the ball past the ‘45 in those conditions? The mark introduced last year has helped improve things 10-fold. That’s a rule that players will utilise a lot more. You can set up an attack a lot quicker after making a mark. But I’d be a bit slow forcing something on a keeper like that. You are taking away from the skill of a Stephen Cluxton or even our own Mark White.”

The last remaining proposed change relates to limiting the number of consecutive handpasses to three.

Maguire has doubts.

If you have three handpasses, are you then going to kick the ball 50 yards up the pitch simply for the sake of it. I can appreciate [the committee] are trying to do the right thing, but some of them seem a bit too extreme.

Maguire’s St Finbarr’s teammate Michael Shields, meanwhile, is adamant Ronan McCarthy, heading into his second campaign as manager, can turn around the fortunes of Cork football.

Said Shields: “There are good footballers in this county. It might take a few years to get back. Ronan McCarthy is definitely the right man for it. People need to be patient. There are young players out there and they just need to be nurtured, given time and worked on. Hopefully, in the next two or three years, we can see a change in it.”

Shields is hoping it will be fourth time lucky after county final defeats in 2009, ‘10 and ‘17. “The best thing about us this year is that a lot of teams have thrown everything at us and yet, we have still come out on top. We’d be happy from that point of view but disappointed we haven’t put a 60-minute performance together. It’s a great position to be in.”