GAA unlikely to revisit rules

SPECIAL CONGRESS: THE GAA are unlikely to implement any further experimental disciplinary rules in the foreseeable future. Saturday’s Special Congress at the Citywest Hotel in Dublin, which is proposing an interim motion on the hurling championship, will be followed by a meeting of Central Council, where a recommendation not to revisit the experimental disciplinary rules is set to be heard.

Such rules – which were implanted in this year’s league and saw a player yellow carded, sent off and replaced by a substitute – failed by just eight votes to get the two-thirds majority at Congress back in April. At the time GAA president Christy Cooney suggested the matter would almost certainly be revisited, but yesterday he hinted otherwise.

“We are bringing something to Central Council on that this weekend, as to how we’re going to move the process forward,” said Cooney. “We’ll be reporting our deliberations on that, and it will be clear then what we will be doing.

“But I think this year’s championship went very well. We’d no major incidents of note. We’d one game where things were very tough, but outside of that, the sportsmanship, and general standard, was excellent this year. Maybe that might give you some clue of the way things are going to go.”

The main business of Saturday’s Special Congress is to agree a structure for the 2010 hurling championship by allowing Carlow participate, while doing away with any relegation – but the bigger issue of relegation/promotion in the hurling championship hasn’t gone away. The interim motion, being proposed by Central Council, is seen as a mere formality.

“I would expect that to be the situation,” said Cooney. “This is really about tidying up the situation, tiding things over for a short space of time, so that we can bring Carlow into the Leinster hurling championship, and go ahead with the championship draw next Tuesday.

“If this goes through at the weekend, we’ll then begin the serious consultation with the counties over the coming months, and bring a proper motion to Congress next year. I’ve said it before that this is a crucial decision for the hurling championship, and whether or not we’re going to have promotion or relegation into the future. That’s the kernel of it.

“But let’s get the hurling championship structured properly for once and for all, the way everybody wants it, and that we don’t have the farcical situation that we had this year.”