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What are the recurring issues you feel are hindering the wonderful game of hurling and are there any tweaks you think would improve the sport?
Here’s my own personal suggestions…
Puck Outs
This one is not a change or a tweak, just looking for the rules to be applied properly!
Almost very goalkeeper that wants to go long steps outside the small square when pucking out the ball, they can already get huge distance on the puckout, there’s no need to seek the extra few yards, but they still do it right in front of 2 umpires and never get pulled up for it.
Can the GAA tell the referees and umpires to simply apply the rules that are there and stamp out this common practice?
Soft Yellow Cards
Our game is too fast, too physical, too skilful for the current system of two yellow cards for innocuous challenges to equal a red card.
Something definitely needs to change on this front.
I have seen Darragh Fitzgibbon and Cian Kenny get a yellow card for trying to hook a player this year with another yellow for another innocuous offence seeing them sent from the field of play with their team left to play out the match minus a player.
It doesn’t make sense, it can ruin a game for the neutral and can ruin a whole season of effort for a whole county where the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.
The ball moves so fast, players move and change direction and elevation so fast that simply mistiming an honest effort at a challenge should not be seen as two strikes and you’re off.
I would propose a traffic light system, we already have the yellow and red, introduce a green. Reclassify a lot of the current offences that warrant a yellow to green, whereby two greens equals a yellow and it’s three offences and you’re off rather than two, or two serious offences or one reckless offence.
I really think this would be a serious and necessary improvement to our game.
Redefine the Black Card
While they’re looking at cards they may reexamine the black card and redefine the use of it. Currently if a back drags down a forward heading for goal it will result in a black card and penalty, however if he holds up the forward illegally denying a goalscoring opportunity it will result in a free and no black card – should this discrepancy exist?
If a player is fouled inside the square and a penalty is awarded is that punishment enough or should that offender be sin binned for 10 minutes too? I don’t think so and again if it’s a certain type of foul on the current rules it will result in a black card where another type of foul will see no black card. It seems to create grey areas where there’s no need. We need more clarity and consistency, this makes life harder for the referee as if that was necessary!
Player Safety
I do feel something needs to be done to better protect players in vulnerable positions from big impacts without introducing more and more red cards for mistimed attempts at fair challenges.
Players are so powerful now and spend so much time in the gym that it’s the big impact collisions that we must protect against. It’s sickening to see the likes of the David Reidy incident where he gets knocked out cold from what appears to have been an honest effort at a challenge, but players move so fast it’s so easy to get the challenge wrong and cause harm.
It is a very tricky one to govern and I’d welcome all efforts to define what’s illegal and dangerous and what’s honest and mistimed, but also how to cut down the numbers of honest mistimed challenges as they can cause just as much damage.
Here’s my suggestion, not sure how practical it is, but again just for the sake of provoking discussion around this topic…
It seems to me that a player is most vulnerable when they’re ducking, twisting, turning, stooping; it’s when they’re moving the position and elevation of their head that they are at most risk of getting a shoulder to the head.
If this is the position that a player is most vulnerable at then the rules need to protect a player in this vulnerable state, I suggest that a shoulder challenge should meet the following criteria:
- A player must be in a fully upright position to be shouldered;
- A player lifting a ball / coming out of a ruck with a ball must be given two free steps before they can be shouldered (time to straighten up);
65’s
With the distance the modern player hits the modern ball has the 65 become too easy? Should it be more of a feat to put a 65 over the bar?
I feel it might make the game more interesting if for juvenile games the 65 stayed as is, but for adult games the 65 had to be hit from your own 65. Just a suggestion! What do you think?
Any other suggestions…
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