FERMANAGH defender Declan McCusker has questioned the need for the radical upheaval in the rules of Gaelic football – and feels the biggest bugbear among players and management in the season ahead will be the heavy consequences of the 50-metre advancement rule.
With the pre-season competitions shelved by Croke Park in 2025, there will be scant exposure for fans to scrutinise the seven key rule enhancements from the Football Review Committee [FRC] before the NFL which gets underway in less than a fortnight’s time.
Players and coaches, meanwhile, are fully engaged in challenge matches this month and are finding their way with the changes.
While McCusker feels keeping three players in the opposition half of the field at all times has strong potential, he’s found the 50-metre advancement for the perceived delaying of a free-kick being taken as the most frustrating rule change.
A player who has made a foul must hand the ball back to the nearest player of the opposition “promptly and respectfully” so that the game can restart quickly, as opposed to previous times when restarts were regularly delayed by throwing the ball away or obstructing the taking of the free.
The referee, in those circumstances, could move the ball forward by 13 metres. Now, under the new rule, the ball can be moved 50 metres up the field.
In a video broadcast, hosted by members of the FRC earlier this week, Eamonn Fitzmaurice explained: “It will require a cultural change but because of the severity of the penalty and the way it’s going to cost teams, you would expect it to have a pretty serious impact straight away and it would clear it out of the game once and for all.”
McCusker, however, feels the 50m advancement is too radical and, frankly, “ridiculous”.
“I’m coming towards the end of my career and I’m thinking, ‘I could’ve done without this’,” said the 34-year-old Fermanagh man.
“Some of the rules are definitely good but there’s just a lot (of changes) at once.
“The wee petty rules are just annoying and goes against everything you’ve been taught - handing the ball back to your opponent (when there’s a foul).
“The punishment is so severe for something so petty. Fair enough, you want to stamp things out, so make it that you can’t throw the ball away - but to have to go and hand it to your opponent is ridiculous.
“One was given against us in a challenge game. Our player didn’t run away but the ball was moved 50m. To move the ball that distance is a score for these things.
“I hope those small rules fizzle out and referees can operate with a bit of common sense,” added the Ederney clubman.
“They are going to be sticklers at the start, but you should be able to just leave the ball. If you throw the ball in your opponent’s direction, that’s not good enough [under the new rule]. They are the ones that irk me most.
“If something like that costs you a game it would frustrate you. The enjoyment is winning games and if you’re losing games over something silly like that it would drive you mad.”
Now in his 15th year with Fermanagh, McCusker admitted he was reticent about the FRC’s rule of teams permanently playing with three players up – but has revised his opinion having experienced its potential in challenge games.
“I was against the three up at the start, but it can make the game more open,” he said.
“I’m sure some boys playing inside will be delighted that they can’t work back! It’s definitely worth a try to see if it makes the game more exciting and more high scoring.”
Generally, though, McCusker’s school of thought was that they game should have been allowed to evolve naturally and can cite no other sport where there was such a radical revision of rules.
“I think when you’re so involved in it and you’re watching to see who can, say, break down this defence, I enjoy watching that.
“People used to give out about the scorelines but if you looked at the scorelines in the 90s modern games are still out-scoring those games most of the time. You get the odd game and people say, ‘that was brutal’, but there were plenty of brutal games in the past.
“There are so many games on TV from early on in the year now, whereas before you never saw the early games in the year unless you went to them.
“So not everybody had their eyes on those games, in bad weather and bad conditions. All you were seeing were the top games at the end of the year and a lot of them were very good; finals were maybe different as teams were cautious and there was so much on the line.
McCusker added: “I still enjoy watching it and playing it.
“You look at other sports and they go through [difficult] periods but not many sports completely uproot the rules because of a so-called few bad years.
“Over the years, this year would’ve been a good year to have the McKenna Cup.
“You’d have your own games to play but you could watch other games and pick up bits and pieces on the rules. I don’t think anyone took the McKenna Cup too seriously, it was preparation games, your friendlies were organised for you, especially in Ulster when you’d have strong opposition.
“But in saying that we’ve got plenty of friendlies and hopefully we’ll be ready for the League.”
