Orla Gray: New camogie rules will ‘speed up the game’

Dublin senior camogie player Orla Gray. Photo by David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile

The new rules introduced in camogie this year will speed up the game, according to Dublin’s Orla Gray.

No longer will players be permitted to drop their hurley’s before giving off a handpass - instead the rule is coming in line with the hurling rule.

On top of that, the ‘quick puck out’ and free from the hand will allow defenders clear their lines more efficiently and reap the full benefit of opposition ill-discipline.

Dublin’s Gray is a fan of the new rules - although the nature of the stop-start season has meant that it has been more difficult to adjust - especially when fighting against the instinct of what she has been doing all her career.

“It’s hard to adapt with the handpassing, you can’t drop your hurl anymore - it’s always something I’d do coming out of the backline but I’m kinda getting used to it now. We’re settling in,” she said as Dublin GAA and AIG launched the new jerseys for the hurling, camogie, football, and ladies football sides at Parnell Park yesterday.

“You can’t do it in club (championship) - I’m so used to doing it with clubs - now coming into county you have to just get used the rules again.

“It’s a bit weird, but we’ll see what happens anyway in the championship,” she said of the handpass rule.

The quick free will also add to the pace of the game, something that can come in handy playing a winter championship on potentially slow, wet pitches.

“It does come in handy that quick free. The fact that the keeper, she doesn’t have to wait for the whistle she can just hit it, it will speed up the game.” 

Despite the pandemic and questions over the rise of confirmed cases across the country in recent weeks, Gray is happy to be out on the pitch and comfortable that all the right precautions are being taken.

“We’re taking out protocols, listening to what Government guidelines are saying so we have hand sanitiser for sliotars, ourselves, everything we use is being sanitised so we are taking the right protocols”.