Burns reveals FRC set to propose back-court rule to football

GAA president Jarlath Burns has revealed the Football Review Committee (FRC) are considering the proposal of a new basketball-like “back-court” rule at Special Congress in October.

Speaking at the opening of the John F Kennedy Summer School in New Ross on Thursday evening, Burns also defended an anticipated proposal by his amateur review status body to provide inter-county managers with stipends, believed to be €20,000 per annum.

He further claimed the GAA will need over €500 million to implement the full integration of the organisation with the Ladies Gaelic Football and Camogie Association.

As the FRC finalise their proposals for Central Council, it’s not expected that they will recommend the goal be made a four-point score or there will be any other new alterations to the existing list of experimental rules.

But Burns said the Jim Gavin-led body are discussing a rule preventing the ball from being passed behind the halfway line after it has been played across it, something which he is positive towards.

“One of the things they have been talking is about once a team passes the halfway line in attack, you can’t go back over the halfway line. I would support that because if you’re two points ahead, it’s too easy just to pass the ball across (the pitch). There has to be a certain amount of pressure to ensure that the last couple of minutes are exciting.”

Believing the rule changes the majority, if not all of which are expected to be made permanent in October, Burns claimed the FRC have “redefined Gaelic football for the next 100 years”.

He added that he had David Clifford in mind when he commissioned Gavin to chair the FRC. “The best player probably in the history of the game is playing now, David Clifford. I think we will ever have a more perfect specimen built for the game than David Clifford.

“Last year, nobody was talking about David Clifford because it was so easy to put a man here (marking him) and a man in front of him. If he was running out, he was bumping into this guy and he couldn’t get the ball and when he got the ball, there were two men on him.

“When Jim Gavin asked me ‘in a sentence, tell me what sort of game do you want’ I said, ‘I want space for the likes of David Clifford to play in’. David Clifford didn’t play until the third game of the league against Tyrone in Pomeroy and I was in the airport watching the game on my phone on TG4 and he scored three goals and I sent a text to Jim saying, ‘Yeah, I think we’re okay’.”

Quizzed by summer school chairperson Eileen Dunne about Gavin being linked as a Fianna Fáil candidate in the forthcoming President of Ireland election, Burns smiled: “I think he would make a fantastic president. It’s not the job of the president of GAA to give any party political comment whatsoever so there are a number of really good candidates.”

Burns confirmed there will be no amateur status review motions going forward to Special Congress. Instead, they will be debated at Annual Congress in February. “What I'm trying to do is to bring in a new template for the amateur status that makes it a little bit easier on players to be a county player. That's not easy. We thought that we could have proposed it for the Special Congress now at the end of October. We're not going to have those ready for that.”

Burns believes providing a stipend to each inter-county manager would ensure they are held accountable by the GAA. “I meet counties who we know are paying big money to managers, standing up and saying, ‘I've been involved with the GAA for 40 years. I think the worst thing in the world is if we start paying managers.’ And also knowing that their managers being paid.

“My job is to defend the values of the GAA. And we can't be disingenuous. And the Revenue have come in this year and had a good old toe poke at us. Caesar's wife has to be beyond reproach. We have to act with integrity if we are to be this honest broker in Irish society. We have to do our affairs correctly. So we either come clean about that and get managers to pay their taxes. Or else we enforce it.

“Or else the third way is… Tony Blair always talked about the third way, that we don't pay managers but we give them a stipend. And from that, we can make them accountable to us.

“So, for example, managers can decide if they're going to give an interview before or after a match. They can decide to allow their players’s pen pictures to be given to GAA+ or RTÉ for matches.

“You know, they can say lots of stuff and we don't have any comeback on because apparently they're volunteers. So I think if we did give them a stipend, at least it would give them a certain amount of accountability. If we say that the return to training day is December 6 and we hear that their county training back in November we can say, ‘Well, you lose your stipend.’” Burns also outlined the price of integration.

“It's going to cost them over half a billion as an association to do that. In two years's time, if we do full integration, does that mean that the Wexford County Board are going to be funding hurling, football, LGFA and camogie, four teams?

“Equity is something that's going to be very important. A camóg getting into her car and driving to training, it's costing the same as a GAA player.”

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