New yellow card system must be given time to work

The GAA have produced a pack outlining new regulations for referees to follow from January with the aim of the new regulations to allow the players that best use the skills of the game to be allowed to demonstrate those skills.  

At the launch of the pack which includes a DVD demonstrating the forbidden fouls and what cards are deemed relevant for which offences, task force chairman Liam O’Neill said: “We constantly hear about teams who play to the rules or play to the edge in whatever way. Well, we want to make that edge a lot sharper now and anyone who plays to it will get cut. We want to make a bargain to our younger players that you grow up in a game where persistent fouling won’t bother you one bit, where you solo by a person without having your head taken off, where you can take the field without fear of being pulled down, where you can part with a ball without being pasted. The bargain we are making with young players is, play your game skilfully and we will protect you.”

Come January, in the subsidiary provincial competitions right through to the national leagues, a three-tier disciplinary system will be set in motion. 

Red card offences will undergo no change in the referee’s rule book but seven additional offences will be punishable by yellow cards. 

These are yellow cards with a different result. The recipient of the yellow card will be sent to the line – at the next break in play they can be replaced by a substitute. The maximum number of substitutes allowed (including regular substitutes) at any one time is six.

This new yellow card method is hoped to punish the individual more than the team and thus become self-regulating through players and managers themselves.

The yellow card offences are pulling down an opponent to tripping with a hand or hurl; deliberately body checking an opponent after he has played the ball away; bringing an arm or a hurl around the neck of an opponent on the ground and away from play; remonstrating in an aggressive manner with a match official and using a hurl in a careless manner, arguably the most contentious of the seven.

The black book will remain in place for many lesser offences and two black books will remain the equivalent of a yellow card.

What teams, managers and supporters will have to grasp is that once a team has used the maximum number of substitutes, including regular substitutions allowed (6 in total) any yellow cards or injuries picked up after that will see a team reduced numerically.

 The Experimental Disciplinary Playing Rules for 2009 are seen as an effort to battle the cynicism and persistent fouling that has begun to infiltrate Gaelic Games. But just when the last attempt with the use of “the Sin Bin” looked to be making headway once everyone got used to it, it was shelved. Hopefully the lifespan of these new rules will be given sufficient breathing space from all concerned with the games, media included, to see if they can work after the expected initial teething problems and outcry are overcome. According to everyone most referees never get it right so the overnight success of these new rules is impossible. Persistence and continuity along a familiar path by “the men in black” is what will be looked for in the implication of these new rules.