Connacht pair vote for return of 'Rules'
Ireland's Brendan Coulter and Paul Galvin tussle with Australia's Chance Bateman and Justin Sherman during the last International Rules series in 2006
Friday March 14 2008
GAA hopes of resuming the International Rules series with Australia have received a timely boost after two Connacht counties rowed in behind it.
Delegates will vote on the thorny issue at Monday's Central Council meeting and Roscommon County Board and Galway Football Board have come out in favour of resuming relations with the Aussies which broke down after violence marred the culmination of the 2006 series.
But Galway still have major issues they want settled before giving it the green light and will especially question its timing, pointing out that its resumption on the same dates as before will run in direct conflict to the GAA's new club-friendly rule about a 'closed season'.
"We had a Special Congress recently all about supporting clubs which banned any intercounty action, even training, in November and December," said Galway Football Board Chairman John Joe Holleran.
"That means there will be a lot of pressure on players in October which is an especially important month for getting club games played. If you're going to take up October with International Rules now it's going to cause more problems," he added.
"Personally I'd feel international games should be moved back into late October and possibly into November, particularly when it is on down in Australia and the weather is not a factor," Holleran said.
He said Galway officials will also consult their inter-county players this week. "We feel that the county panel of 30 players is pretty representative of the rest of club players in the county and we will be guided by their feelings too," he added.
"We have people who have serious reservations about how it ended up last time but by and large people are receptive to having an international dimension for our players.
"The GAA have to clean it up, improve the refereeing and certainly Croke Park's own marketing the last time contributed to the problems," Holleran charged.
"I run my own business so I'm into marketing but the type of advertising that went with the last series -- an ad that repeated 'Play Hard!' over and over -- contributed, I think, to the problems and did us no favours.
Fine
"The first game which we hosted in Galway was fine, we'd no problems but everything went out the window in Dublin afterwards. That was way off the mark. There's no way we want to ever see anything like that again and the GAA has to guarantee that."
Roscommon County Board PRO Michael Fahey said that, despite some dissenters, their delegates were "overwhelmingly in favour" of resuming a relationship with the Australians.
GAA officials met with AFL in Dubai last month and have produced a four-page outline for a re-vamped series. The question of discipline has been most scrutinised and one of the disincentives for rough play is that anyone sent off in the series will carry their punishment back into their domestic league (GAA and AFL) afterwards.
- Cliona Foley
