David Hassan urges GAA community to give rule changes a chance

David Hassan has urged the GAA community to wait and see how the experimental rule changes fare in practice.

The introduction of the five rule changes for Gaelic football have been met with scepticism in some quarters, as the debate rages as to whether they will improve the game.

Hassan, chairman of the Standing Committee on Playing Rules, appealed to the public to give the rules a chance.

"People generally are sceptical of change," he opined. "That's true in any walk of life. People are concerned what change will look like. I would encourage people to approach it optimistically and positively and give these experimental rules an opportunity. Let's see how they work in practice.

"At the end of that process, we will know how they have worked in terms of the impact they will have. We will put that data again in the public domain and people can make up their own minds. I don't have a problem with people having opinions. That's really to be welcomed. The strength of opinion in some cases I would welcome.

"I would point to the facts and ultimately, any objective analysis of those facts lead only to one conclusion, in particular in relation to the hand pass, which seems to have received particular coverage... if there is not some form of intervention to reduce that, the danger is it continues to dominate the game."

Hassan pointed to data-heavy evidence to suggest that these rules could improve the sport as a spectacle. For instance, 2011 to 2018 has seen an average increase of 100 hand passes in a game, thus the limit being introduced.

"The reality is this is designed to bring the game forward," Hassan said of the new rules. "To respond to the data which was pointing very much in one direction.

"I mean, you will have seen this statistic in various quarters, but in 2011 a team would ordinarily have about 65 or 66 possessions. Nowadays, that same team has about 42 or 43 possessions.

"When we got the feedback from county committees and others they said they wanted to see a reassertion of the fundamental skills, catching and kicking, so we sought to reflect their views as well as what the data was telling us."

The rules will be trialled in the pre-season competitions and the National Leagues, before being voted upon at Congress 2020 to be fully implemented.