GAELIC GAMES NEWS: IN WHAT is a further embarrassment for the GAA's annual congress, the motion passed last April to introduce automatic timing to matches on a trial basis has had to be deferred pending a major redrafting.

Saturday’s Central Council meeting decided the implementation of the clock and hooter, as used in women’s football and international rules, and successfully piloted through congress by the Clonard club in Wexford would have to be deferred on grounds of “cost (€250,000) and practical difficulties”.

The figure of quarter of a million euro was arrived at after consultation with the women’s football authorities.

It is unusual to see accepted congress motions set aside on the grounds of cost but that was not the significant factor in the decision, according to Feargal McGill, the GAA’s operations manager, who is also an officer of the Central Competitions Control Committee (CCCC), which delivered an assessment of the Wexford proposal at the weekend.

“The view of Central Council was more that it was a lot of money to spend on something that hadn’t been fully worked out. CCCC was asked to consider the situation from a practical point of view and we felt that the cost was a practical issue in the light of the uncertainty.

“There are a number of ambiguities in the agreed motion and we need to get them sorted out first. For instance, the proposal appears to envisage the clock only starting from the moment the fourth official raises their board – and the feeling is that that was not what was intended.”

The Wexford county committee was due to consider the matter at last night’s meeting and brief delegates on the weekend’s decision, which included an undertaking to revisit the matter at next year’s congress.

According to the county’s central council delegate Paddy Wickham the issue is one of drafting.

“The biggest problem was that the motion wasn’t worded right. It’s only a matter of going back to congress.”

The procedural difficulties include a lack of specific detail as to how the clock would operate: when would it be stopped, would there be a countdown, as in the women’s, or a count-up?

There were also some relevant rules affecting match time-keeping, which has always been a matter for referees, that should have been cited as needing amendment.

Asked whether the matter could not have been sorted out by procedures intended to prevent defective motions from being ruled out of order, McGill said that the deficiencies had been too comprehensive.

“There’s no problem asking the Rules Advisory Committee to tidy up a motion that’s missing one or two rules references but in this case we’d have to try and second guess what congress intended in originally accepting the proposal.”

The Clonard motion that passed congress last April was as follows: “That the clock/hooter system be introduced to signal the conclusion of a game following the notification by the fourth official or other designated person of the finishing time to include added time to be played. This procedure be initially introduced in 2011 on a trial basis for all senior intercounty league games in all divisions in both hurling and football and if successful it also be implemented for all intercounty championship games in both codes in 2012.”

The events of the weekend leave the decision of last April’s congress to trial the idea during next year’s National Leagues shelved and it will now be 2012 before the initiative can be implemented.

A year previously at the 2009 congress, a motion in respect of the Leinster hurling championship was accepted and required a special congress the following autumn to sort out the anomaly created.

One of the obvious difficulties at last April’s congress in Newcastle, Co Down, was that in what was a five-yearly opportunity to amend the playing rules, there were simply too many motions on the clár.

Clonard’s was number 40 and taken on Saturday afternoon but without much debate other than the procedural withdrawal of other motions on the same subject in favour of the Wexford one.

As a result the matter will have to be completely redrafted and submitted once again to congress where it is hoped that it will receive more careful consideration.