Football

Antrim forward Patrick McBride: Timing of rules trial unfair

Antrim forward Patrick McBride. Picture by Seamus Loughran
Antrim forward Patrick McBride. Picture by Seamus Loughran Antrim forward Patrick McBride. Picture by Seamus Loughran

ANTRIM forward Patrick McBride has questioned the GAA’s decision to trial a series of new rules during next year’s Allianz National Football Leagues.

A Central Council meeting at the weekend passed five rule changes that will be trialled across the provincial pre-season competitions and the leagues, but will not be in play for next summer’s championship regardless of their success.

For the vast majority of counties, huge stock is now placed on the leagues, more so than the championship in some cases.

Antrim will be striving to get off the bottom rung having missed out on promotion from Division Four last year, and St John’s clubman McBride believes the timing of the rules’ introduction is unfair.

“People wanting to make it more attractive looking are trying it out on us. We’re looking forward to the league but that’s a year of your county career, which doesn’t last long for some people, and they have to play it under mad rules. “What I think is mad about it is that you’ll be playing more or less a different game from the one you’ll be playing with your club.

“It’s like you’re playing a different game for seven games of the year, and all your training’s geared for that, and then it has to change again come championship.”

McBride, who had a fine 2018 for his county following his move into a permanent attacking position, is not against the idea of changing football’s rules.

He doesn’t, however, believe that the rules that have been passed into temporary law are the proper solutions to the game’s ills.

“Some of them are understandable, but the three handpass rule is ridiculous.

“It’s going to be more defensive than it already is because of it. A lot of teams will say the opposition only have three handpasses, they’re going to have to kick it eventually, and we’ll just put more men back and wait for them to kick it to us.

“Teams will think they have less handpasses to shift our defence about, so we’ll go defensively. If you want to move defenders to create scoring opportunities, sometimes you have to use a nice handpass combination to open them up or shift them across.

“Teams are not going to want to give the ball away so they’ll just kick it back and restart their handpasses. I think teams will sit back and wait for the opposition to come into them.

“The game’s become so percentage based. Every county team will have someone doing stats, asking how many balls were given away, turnovers, unforced turnovers, who gave the ball away.

“If you’re the one receiving the third handpass, you’re not going to just hoof the ball in and kick it away because you can’t handpass it again.

“Teams will just have to have someone behind the attack all the time to kick the ball backwards to. A lot of it will be a couple of handpasses and trying to work a score, and if that doesn’t happen they’ll kick it back and start over.

“There are certain rules that could make it better. The one I’d have no problem with is a basketball rule, the back-court rule where you can’t go back into your own half.

“That would stop teams playing about their back line, and entice defences to come out five or ten yards and try to win the ball through a turnover.

“This one, people are thinking that it’ll encourage you to kick the ball forward more, but I think it’ll go backwards more.”