Burns bins sin-bin

October 13, 2016

Jarlath Burns.
©INPHO/Presseye/Lorcan Doherty.

Jarlath Burns says the playing rules committee has "no appetite" to replace the black card with a sin-bin.

On the day that GAA president Aogán Ó Fearghail confirmed that the black card is here to stay for at least four more years, Burns - who was part of the committee's third-year review of the sanction earlier this week and describes himself as "a very, very strong defender of the black card rule" - points out that the sin-bin is a non-runner:

"A sin-bin is dead-on in Croke Park, where you have a top-quality referee, two intercounty referees watching the game on the sideline and four really good, consistent umpires," the Silverbridge clubman told The Irish News.

"But what if you have two Division Four teams on a wet Tuesday night playing a game somewhere? Or a Division Two U16 game? We have to make sure we don't have one rule for the county game and one rule for the club game - we want to maintain consistency throughout the Association.

"I don't want to go into the specifics of what we discussed but there is no appetite within the standing playing rules committee to do anything regarding that. It is important in the initial years of the black card that we allow it to bed into the culture of the Association before we start tinkering with sanctions."


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