THE FIVE YEAR LIMIT on discussing playing rules changes in the GAA will be relaxed if a motion is brought to next year’s Annual Congress and passed.

The GAA’s Central Council has agreed in principle to the initiative.

Currently, a change to playing rules in the GAA can only be adopted once every five years.

Proposed rules are usually trialled in national leagues and college competitions, as seen with the divisive ‘handpass’ rule this year.

Director general of the GAA, Paraic Duffy, expressed his dissatisfaction with the process earlier this year:

What does annoy me somewhat is that we go through this cycle every single time.

Changes are proposed and changes are accepted on an experimental basis and before the trial process has even started we have people – and I have to say managers in particular – expressing views on what’s wrong with them.

Duffy defended the idea of trialling rule changes before they are implemented, though, saying:

[T]he whole idea of trialling changes, which I think is the right way to do it, is you see them in action, see how they work and then make a decision.

We have the same this year – the mark won’t work, let’s keep the hand pass and so on – let’s look at it and see what the effect is before leaping to judgement.