Queen's manager gives his take on new Gaelic football rules not being applied in the Sigerson Cup

Former Down star Conor Deegan has suggested that the new ‘three up’ rule may be the most difficult for players to adjust to.

Deegan is managing Queen’s University Belfast in the upcoming Sigerson Cup campaign, for which the Jim Gavin-led Football Review Committee’s new suite of rules won’t apply.

But Deegan had been implementing some of the rules in his training before it emerged that they would not be in play at third level. The ‘three-up’ rule means that both teams must each keep at least three players in one half of the field at any given time.

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Deegan explained: “The one we found probably most difficult was keeping three up, for the very simple reason that players are now preconditioned to track back – you are sort of standing at the halfway line shouting at them not to go back over the halfway line and they were still doing it.

“It will take a while for it to bed in and that’s why they will be running countless games among themselves to get up to speed.”

While not necessarily against the rule, the two-time All-Ireland winner says it is counterintuitive to how players have been conditioned to play the game.

“A corner-back comes out with the ball, he charges up the pitch, what do you do? Do you just stop running after him? Yep, that’s what you have to do, you have to actually stop, so it is a seismic shift in how you think and you have to be exceptionally smart and sharp about how you are going to do this.

“If you step over the line, then all of a sudden it’s a free, it’s brought up, the penalty is a fairly tough penalty. I think that’s going to change the game.

“From what we saw, moving the ball quicker, absolutely, through the boot, 100%. But the work that you have to do off the ball is absolutely huge because if you kick the ball and you're trying to give support runs, you know, you're kicking it 40 or 50 metres, maybe more, if you're trying to make that yardage up, how often can you do that over the course of a game? It's going to be very, very physically demanding on players. That's the slight concern.

“The other of it is that it definitely frees up the ball, the ball is moved a lot, lot sharper. There's definitely elements of it that are going...and maybe it'll change our coaching and it'll bring us all back to thinking slightly differently and more forward thinking, which won't do any harm.”

Deegan admitted that some form of surgery was required, however.

“It did need to change, something had to give. The fact they've had to throw in so many rules so quickly, I think that gives a clear indication that things were a wee bit broke at that stage.

“It wasn't a pleasant game to watch. And the only time, like, when you were watching a match, it only got interesting in the last 10 or 15 minutes when it was in the melting pot. Then all hell broke loose and teams stopped defending like hell and started bombing forward and kicking the ball. If we could go back to playing like that all the time it would be a different game.”

His Queen’s side have been drawn to play St Mary’s in the first round of the Sigerson Cup next month and Deegan is satisfied that the new rules won’t apply in the competition.

“I am, purely on the basis of time. Time would have been very, very difficult for us to implement them and get them well drilled into our players. It would have added an extra layer of difficulty for players and for referees.”

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