Room to improve with new rules, says Kevin McStay

THE new rules were always going to come up at Kevin McStay’s post-match press conference on Saturday night.

The road tests no more. Mayo’s rubber finally hit the road in a game which produced a result that wouldn’t have been a huge shock under the old regime, truth be told.

Going by the way they played, Mayo clearly tried to make hay in the new pasture, but Kevin McStay, yet again, sought to play down the new diktats.

Most of his post-match analysis concerned the good, the bad and the could-have-been-better regarding the basic essentials; tackling, turnovers, work rate, the usual. He wasn’t across key metrics, like the number of two-pointers, or the number of shots from beyond the 40-metre arc - or at least he didn’t let on to be - and noted the loss of three challenge matches due to inclement weather.

“I didn’t think the new rules had a big deal,” McStay concluded after answering the first question.

The Mayo News begged to differ. Were players like Paul Towey and Fergal Boland instructed to go for two-pointers, as they quite often did in a game where several orange flag attempts landed in the goalie’s hands?

“No, that’s something you kind of feel your way through. We’ll have to have a look at where those shots came from,” replied a not-too-fussed Kevin McStay.

“I’d say once or twice we might have forced that two-pointer, certainly at the end when we were trying to get the draw, that was the obvious one. But we got the ball generally into the hands of our good shooters and it just didn’t happen for us tonight.”

McStay acknowledged that the new rules did affect proceedings.

But if players are not directly instructed to shoot from distance or run from deep, then are players instinctively taking on shots and runs they’d have forgone under the old rules?

“Once we have three back we are happy enough, everybody will want a bit of coverage. So the guy that you can commit most generously and won’t frighten the life out of you is your keeper, and I thought his overall play was very good tonight, really good,” said McStay of Colm Reape. “His interventions were good in terms of coming into the line, so we are trying to develop every aspect of it, it’s not just any single thing.”

Another scribe asked if intercounty managers are looking for a different kind of footballer to exploit the new marks, kick the two-pointers, leave the landlocked corner-forward forward for dead et cetera, et cetera.

“We all still want good footballers, the best footballers, the most skilful footballers. The highest quality footballers were good in the old game and they are going to be the best players in the new game too,” said McStay, who singled out newbies Davitt Neary and Conor Reid for praise.

“It was only a personal opinion, I didn’t think the rules had a big deal in it. I thought it was a decent game of football, a reasonably open game of football, good parts and bad parts.”

We’re all still learning. That’s the way it’s going to be for the next few weeks as everyone becomes accustomed to the new normal.