The GAA’s playing rules committee chairman David Hassan says teams will have to get creative to overcome the three handpass limit in the forthcoming pre-season and Allianz League competitions.

As the GAA yesterday confirmed they will meet with the GPA to discuss the latter’s concerns about the five experimental rules being trialled in the league, Hassan pointed out GPA president David Collins was on the playing rules group that recommended them and the process to introduce the changes was done in “an open, transparent process”.

The Irish Examiner yesterday highlighted several goals scored in the 2018 Championship which would have been ruled out had the handpass quota been in operation.

Hassan, who anticipates there will be a “rocky transition in some cases” with the rule changes, said the intention of the handpass quota is to curb what has become an instinctive transfer of the ball for players.

“The handpass is almost becoming a reflex response to receiving the ball. In other words, as soon as I receive the ball I must handpass it. The rule will encourage people to think more seriously about how they use that form of passing.

“I would make the point that one of the benefits, maybe unintended consequence, of the restriction, is that it does encourage people to think more about their use of the pass which could either be a handpass or a kick-pass.

“Obviously, by virtue of restricting the handpass we will see an increase in kicking of the ball.”

Hassan accepts teams can kick the ball backwards or sideways to restart a move when the limit of three consecutive hand-passes is reached.

“I know that between the provincial tournament games and the National Football League, there’ll be of the order of 162 games. We would be naive to think that during the course of those games, we won’t have a situation such as you’ve described.”

Hassan clarified that the chain of handpasses will only be deemed broken by referees “when an opposition player plays the ball”.

A palmed goal after a third consecutive handpass will not constitute a rule contravention. However, a fisted point is considered a handpass meaning it can only be scored with or before the third straight handpass.

The Derry man readily admits the idea of establishing zones for kickouts, as was their original proposal, did not work in trial matches. Eventually, it was agreed that the only kickout change to be trialled is the taking of all kickouts from the 20-metre line.

“Not that it didn’t allow for a better balance of players across the field of play, maybe in a slightly difficult manner it lead to players taking up their starting positions. Conceptually, it was fine. But it was one of those classic situations where conceptually it made sense but in practice it didn’t work.

“We spoke to referees. They said, ‘this is difficult. We literally need eyes in the back of our head to see whether players were the other side of the 45.’ So we took that on board. Of course, players themselves weren’t in favour of it. so we took that off the table.

“That left us with the kickout beyond the 45. There were again difficulties with that. Was the ball clearing the 45? Referees again found that difficult to judge that. Even at the Central Council meeting on Saturday, it was raised a few times, how applicable it was at all levels. Was it possible in all such instances for a goalkeeper to clear the 45. Again, we couldn’t be sure.

“When we took that off the table as well and we were left with the kickout from the 20 line, I have to say there was universal approval.”

Hassan also confirmed the sin-bin will be a 10-minute punishment from the time of the black card infraction and won’t be subject to stoppages. Put to him that teams could waste time as a means of being restored to their full complement of 15 players, Hassan replied: “That is possible. But it is an issue across a number of proposed changes.

“But we had to have a rule that could be applied in all instances.”

He understands that there are fears the mark inside the 45m line from kicks 20m or further outside the area could toy with the dynamics of the game.

“What I would say is, a key element to what we’re trying to get is to incentivise the kicking of the ball, kicking of the ball over slightly longer distances which, again, the information that we were receiving was that that was almost being written out of the game.

“So we had to look at ways in which we could incentivise the longer kicking, particularly into the forward line and, again, a situation which could be applied under all circumstances and that’s what we came up with.”