TYRONE goalkeeper Niall Morgan has hit out at the GAA’s rule-makers, claiming “Croke Park won’t be content until we are just lumping it out long between the midfielders”.
Annual Congress surprisingly passed a motion at the weekend which will ban goalkeepers from receiving the ball back from an outfield player immediately after they’ve kicked it.
Circumventing the rule will not be as easy as the suggestion of having an outfield player taking the kickout. In that case, the goalkeeper must also stay inside his own 21-yard line and so cannot receive the ball.
Morgan has, along with Rory Beggan and Graham Brody, propelled football into a new era whereby the goalkeeper has become an offensive weapon.
The clearly unimpressed Edendork man was speaking after turning in a brilliant display in Tyrone’s win over Dublin, where he kicked four magnificent pointed frees in horrendous conditions.
“For me, I don’t understand why people who don’t play the game, get to make the decisions on what players have to do.
“I know the GPA have two delegates at a meeting representing the players and to me it doesn’t make sense.
“There are a group of men, maybe retired, who might not have played football to a decent level. They get to decide what the rules are for the current players?
“Just leave the game as it is for a while at least. Hurling seem to vote against change, they like their game the way it is, but we vote against our own game.
“What was it, 83% of delegates voted against being open and honest about what you are voting for?
“So, why do they get a secret ballot, covering up rule changes? It’s something I will never understand.”
Data revealed yesterday by performance analyst Diarmuid Whelan for Deely Sport Science shows that Tyrone have used the now-outlawed kick on 14 per cent of their restarts during this league campaign. That was well above average and second only to Galway, who have used it 15 per cent of the time.
“Look, we work on it a lot,” said Morgan.
“It can be a risky kickout if you don’t get it back and it could leave you under a lot of pressure.
“We don’t get to decide the rule changes. It’s like anything in life, no matter what rule changes, you have to get on with the job and find a different way around it.
“To me, goalkeeping has changed vastly in the last ten or twelve years, with Cluxton coming along, then myself, Rory (Beggan), Graham Brody, Shaun Patton as well. And we are all trying to make goalkeepers want to play.
“I don’t think they are going to be content in Croke Park until we are just lumping it out long between the midfielders.
“I think the next thing they are going to try to implement is the kickout has to pass the 45-metre line like in International Rules.
“I don’t think they take into consideration the club footballers, the club referees.”
His manager, Mickey Harte, was equally up in arms, sarcastically noting when asked about it: “Ach sure it’s time for another rule change, isn’t it? The referees are getting used to the ones that are there, so give them a couple more.”
The GAA has confirmed that it will be in play for this year’s championship but when quizzed on whether he felt it would have been preferable to at least bring it in for the last two games of the league, Harte said: “That’s it. There’s no point me talking about the people who make rules because they make them anyway, and as many as they want.
“They don’t always consult with the people on the ground over whether these are sensible rules or not – that’s a fact.
“They just bring these in. That happens, we can do nothing about it.”
Dublin boss Dessie Farrell agreed there ought to have been a trial but wasn’t against the idea in principle.
“I actually think that’s a good rule change. It squeezes the thing up.
“Because you can see out there in situations where teams want to run down the clock, they’ve got their advantage and the use of the goalkeeper becomes quite apparent in that way.”
