The GAA's sceptical relationship with time keeping is not a new phenomenon

Irish Times

20-06-2025

At last November's special congress,
Jim Gavin's
Football Review Committee
(FRC) managed to have all of its provisions accepted for implementation in the 2025 season. It was a remarkable feat of persuasion in less than a year.
Neither were there any cliffhangers. In fact, the least enthusiastically received idea was that of the match clock, which attracted the support of a relatively restrained 74 per cent of delegates.
Since its introduction, it has been one of the most troublesome amendments. It triggered concerns that it would prove too expensive or too complicated in the requirement that it be synced with the time displays on broadcast coverage.
A countdown clock was accepted in women's football in the mid-1990s. Following its largely seamless application, it wasn't long prompting the men's game to wonder if it might it be a worthwhile adoption.
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Twice the idea, having been floated at congress, came to nothing – once defeated and the next time, accepted but never introduced, again for logistical reasons, after being trialled in third-level matches.
Since 2015, things have changed. The whole area of time was reviewed and in response to rising concern about gamesmanship, a new set of guidelines were issued to referees.
One of the main sources of disquiet was the use of strategic substitutions to run down the clock. It was accordingly decided that 20 seconds should be added for every replacement brought on during a match. That is why there is apparently more time in the second half of matches than in the first: it's when the bulk of the substitutions are made.
Other issues to come under scrutiny were goalkeepers coming up the field for free-kicks and pauses for Hawk-Eye determinations.
Eventually, the FRC motions 46 and 47, providing for clock/hooter use and the hand-signal protocol for referees to stop and resume play were passed and implemented – at least in broadcast matches.
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The
GAA's
apparently sceptical relationship with time keeping is not a new phenomenon. It is all of 87 years since an initial attempt was made to mechanise time keeping and remove it from a referee's duties.
Maurice Bogue was the inventor of the eponymous Bogue Clock, a pioneering idea to display time at GAA grounds, which would be stopped and restarted as the referee indicated. The point was to ensure that a full hour would be played in matches.
Display was on a large clock face with Roman numerals – according to one report, 'like a giant stopwatch' – and it was first used in a challenge match between Louth and Mayo in May 1938 at the Gaelic Grounds in Drogheda.
Later that year, it was used to keep time at a league match between Louth and Meath, which ended in a draw. Attempts to incorporate the clock into the rule book in 1939 and 1940 were not successful and although Bogue, a businessman and inventor, who lived in Drogheda, was prepared to mount exhibitions of his timepiece in various grounds across the country, the matter did not return to congress for 10 years.
In 1950, delegates declined to introduce the clock but did stipulate that it should be trialled the following year and evidence of that can be seen in PD Mehigan's report of the Railway Cup semi-finals on February 19th, 1951.
'The advent of the Bogue Clock as timekeeper instead of the referee was on trial and pleased the public, who were able to follow the different stages of the game,' the report said.
At congress in 1951, the idea of the clock was buried despite the range of enthusiasts for the prospect of referees being able to concentrate on officiating rather than also keeping time.
A report in The Irish Times Pictorial, a weekly published between 1942-1958, reflected on the fate of the Bogue Clock at congress.
'Opinions were divided on the wisdom of having a clock at all in Croke Park. The system of leaving the referee to keep an eye on the time and on the play, while making up broken time, appears to be the popular idea,' the report said.
'In support of the system [status quo] a Cork delegate said that Cork had lost five All-Irelands by a point, in each case near time and had never questioned the referee's ability to play full time.'
This may have been in solidarity with the county's Paddy O'Keeffe, who was general secretary of the GAA at the time, and who had expressed the view that discussions on the Bogue Clock might be seen as an unwelcome reflection on the association's referees.