O’Donovan aiming to tidy up the Hurling Handpass at GAA Congress

By Shane Brophy

GAA Congress takes place in Donegal this weekend where Tipperary will propose a motion to amend the handpass rule in hurling, aiming to eliminate the throwing of the ball from the game.

Long time campaigner on the issue, former Tipperary All-Ireland winning defender Conor O’Donovan will speak on the motion at the Abbey Hotel in Donegal Town on Saturday, with the proposal to amend rule 4.2(b) of the playing rules of hurling states: “to handpass the ball, from the same hand that is holding the ball, or without it being released and struck with a definite striking action of the hand.”

The Nenagh Eire Og clubman has been invited by Tipperary GAA officials to be one of their delegates and present the case which he feels is an “important issue for hurling”.

“Do we want to be stuck with the continuation of ball throwing, and there is no point in saying otherwise because that is what is going on or do we want to eliminate it from the game,” he said to the Nenagh Guardian this week.

O’Donovan, who won All-Ireland senior medals with Tipperary in 1989 and 1991, is unsure as to how much support he will have, with a sixty percent threshold needed for a rule change.

“I haven’t canvassed at all, but I would hope that the issue itself, and people would be familiar enough with it at this stage, as to what way they should vote on it,” he said.

“It is going to involve all counties voting on it, even non-hurling counties, which is bringing them into it, and hopefully creating awareness to them that, hey, it isn’t just football that has had an issue with its game.

“With football, it’s more to do with the enjoyment value of the games but with hurling there is an issue with a rule that is being blatantly broken. It isn’t just football that has problems, hurling as it as well, including steps which is a problem as well but it don’t have a solution for the steps at the moment but there is one for the throwing of the ball.”

O’Donovan has been critical of leading hurling pundits downplaying the rise in ball-throwing in recent years and is also bemused why referees aren’t making more of an issue of it.

“The pundits are obviously in favour of, as far as I am concerned, is allowing the throwing to exist in the game,” O’Donovan added.

“The benefit of action replay and slowing it down and seeing if there was a gap between the players hand and the ball, and then they make a big deal out of it that the referee made a mistake. But here is the double-standard, they won’t go back over any case where the ball is clearly thrown and the referee didn’t penalise it, they won’t highlight that.

“I don’t understand why you don’t have more referees aren’t more outspoken on the issue or pushing Croke Park to resolve this matter.

“You have to be concerned about referees, and they are human beings as well, but surely the integrity of the game of hurling should be above all that.”

“I have had it from a few people who were at the recent (Limerick v Tipperary) game, where quite often there were people in the crowd shouting ‘throw’ almost every time there was a handpass. I mean, come on, that has to be enough for the GAA heads to say, we have to tackle this, definitively.”

Conor O’Donovan’s proposal was trialled at freshers level in college hurling and he feels, if introduced, would transform the game, and eradicate other negative elements which reared their head.

O’Donovan added: “I went to two of the games in UL and the first night, Aaron Morgan (Kilruane MacDonaghs, brother of Craig) was playing for UL at centre back and I asked him, after the game, how he found adapting to the trail rule, and the one thing he said he found he wasn’t taking the ball into the tackle, and was striking the ball earlier so that is one other knock on positive effect that the introduction of this (handpass) rule would have.

“Another positive knock on effect would be the significant reduction in the amount of rucks in the game.”