AS A RENOWNED student of Gaelic football, coaching and playing now into his fourteenth season with Tyrone, there are few better qualified to make objective observations on the new rules than Mattie Donnelly.

“You’re trying to wash out a lifetime of habits for a lot of men, so there is a lot of getting used to,” he says after their opening round win in the national league over Derry.

“But, at the same time, a lot of the training at that level is conditioned games anyway, and it’s just one massive conditioned game, so if boys do their homework and they talk each other through it, you’ll be alright.

“We’ve adapted alright to it, but it’s going to be a work in progress. There’s a lot of settling in and sorting out to do yet with teams and how they’re going to approach these new rules. That’s going to be the interesting thing over the next few weeks.”

There are cultural factors at play here, Donnelly explains. For years, teams have been careful with shot selection. To go for efforts with a high percentage chance of success. Suddenly firing indiscriminately for the sake of a two-point arc would feel strange.

“At the same time, good decisions are still going to be key and come up trumps in this game, regardless of the new rules,” he says.

After a long year with Trillick, and the sad passing of their manager Jody Gormley, Donnelly has only been back for the past fortnight, during which time he has had what he calls a ‘crash course.’

“You are very much back to school again, you are quizzing and querying all the rules, any loopholes, what happens if this happens sort of stuff and even up to tonight there was that element to it and they made a few changes during the week to the rules as well.

“We have had the month but there is still so much sorting out in terms of how teams are going to approach this and get the best out of the new rules and how they can push the new rules so it is going to evolve over the next few weeks.

“Everyone involved, the supporters, players, will have to be patient. All of this could change and by the end of the league which is a review point, so it is hard to get too tied to them either.”

What stood out for him was the rule around dissent, or not handing the ball back to your opponent once a foul has occurred.

“A lot of the time it is hard to get out of the road in some of those occasions, you are at the ref’s discretion there so you are always waiting a bit nervous, thinking, ‘have I been nabbed here?’

“It is a lifetime’s habit you are trying to wash out of boys so there is a lot of that stuff you have to work through.

“There are a few scenarios that you still want to work through. You are, more or less, back to school, there is much learning as a bloody module in college getting through these new rules, getting through them all in the videos and the materials.

“But, look, there have been enough good heads around them that you have to trust that. You have to see how it evolves over the next few weeks but something needed to be done.”

And Tyrone also have the happy coincidence that their new manager, Malachy O’Rourke, was on the Football Review Committee that settled on these rule ‘enhancements’.

“There was a good insight from the advantage gained further down the track in that he was saying there is a good chance these are coming in,” said Donnelly.

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It’s a new situation for everyone. And some of the new rules may not make it past the first review. So it’s difficult to know just how much time is sank into adapting to them and making them work.

“I am interested in sitting back and watching the other games and see how they unfold over the weeks,” says Donnelly.

“But I think everyone has to be patient in how it evolves and be pragmatic too that there may be changes here and there but, as I said, the right heads were around it. In Jim Gavin, you could not get a better man overseeing it and he was well assisted by the people around him, so you trust those boys, we are in good hands there.”