“I’d be cursing whoever got rid of the McKenna Cup”: Former Mayo manager James Horan

FOOTBALL Review Committee member James Horan reckons inter-county managers must be ‘cursing’ the GAA for scrapping the McKenna Cup.

Horan, who managed Mayo to four All-Ireland finals between 2012 and 2021, is part of the Jim Gavin chaired FRC which has devised over 50 different ‘rules enhancements’ for the game.

With seven ‘core’ proposals - including keeping three attackers beyond the halfway line at all times, a restriction on backpassing to the goalkeeper, the solo-and-go restart and the new two and four-point scoring system - the game is on the brink of overhaul.

The proposed new rules will be used in the interprovincial tournament at Croke Park on October 18/19.

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Central Council will then consider them on October 26 with a view to voting on them at a Special Congress on November 30.

The FRC’s plan is to run the entire suite of rules in club and county competitions in 2025, as temporary rules, before potentially installing them on a permanent basis in 2026.

But with the GAA recently opting to shelve all of January’s pre-season competitions, inter-county teams won’t get any chance to road test the rules in competitive fixtures before the National League.

Asked at yesterday’s Croke Park briefing if he reckons inter-county managers are secretly cursing the FRC for messing with the game, Horan had an alternative take.

“I’d be cursing who got rid of the pre-season competitions this year,” he shot back.

“That’s who I’d be cursing this year. Because we were talking to John Cleary (Cork manager) on Monday.

“He can’t start training until December 7. He can’t have any challenges. He has no pre-season competition.

“He’ll have all his college guys gone in January playing third level, and in December, after the club season, you’ll have a lot of guys that have gone on holidays.

“So he’s going to get a couple of sessions, I’d say, with all his team playing before the National League starts.

“That’s awful tough on an inter-county manager. If I was an inter-county manager, I’d definitely be giving out to someone about something.

“It’s too short. I think the FBD League in Connacht would have been perfect for it this year, of all years.”

Horan reckons it’s too late now to revisit the pre-season competition decision but would like some form of one-off tournament for county teams.

“I think it would be great if there was something, whether you could play challenges earlier in December, or if there was something there,” he said.

“I don’t know if you could get the provincial competitions back at this stage but if there was something to allow an inter-county manager to get ready, particularly for this year, because you’re going to have relegation in the league. There’s going to be two teams relegated.”

Despite his concerns, Horan stopped short of predicting a chaotic first few weeks in the National League.

Teams will have the added pressure of fighting for their Sam Maguire Cup status in some cases but Horan backed players to make the best of it.

“A lot of those players are awful smart,” he said.

“They pick these things up very, very quickly. I think you’ll see a pretty good version of it fairly quickly, which hopefully will sell it and people will see the benefits of it, along with the Railway Cup next weekend.”

Horan said the evidence from the seven sandbox, or trial, games which have taken place, is that we have nothing to fear.

“Kildare played Cavan last weekend and that was the highest-profile game we played,” he said.

“There were probably seven or eight senior inter-county players in each team. It was like a normal game.

“It was like a game from 15 years ago. Not all of the rules are involved in every phase of the game.

“Like, for the first three-quarters of that game, there was no solo-and-go, there was no two-point shot.

“The only two rules that were there the whole time, and you don’t even notice them because they’re constant, is the goalkeeper (restriction) and the three up.

“They were the only two. Everything else was like it wasn’t there.

“So in one way, I don’t know if there’ll be as much chaos as it sounds like when you listen to people, or when you see a big 200-page book.

“You think, ‘Jesus Christ’ and all of this. But I don’t think it’ll manifest that way at all.”

The FRC released a 204-page interim report yesterday to coincide with the launch though much of it was explanatory pictures and data collected during the research phase.

One unknown for the FRC is exactly how fit players will need to be to keep up with the new faster, more dynamic game. With quicker restarts will come fewer rest periods.

It’s understood that the upcoming interprovincial tournament at Croke Park will be broken into four 15-minute periods partly for this reason.

The FRC is also investigating how roll-on and roll-off subs could work.