Seamus Hayes: Football needs these rules changes, players and spectators too

Carbery Rangers senior footballers are looking to put a frustrating year behind them and start the new year in positive mood.

2025 offers Seamus Hayes and his senior panel a fresh start.

The previous 12 months saw Rangers relegated from Division 1 of the county league and needing a relegation play-off victory to maintain their Premier Senior stats.

Along with facing Carrigaline, Clonakilty and St Finbarr’s in the McCarthy Insurance Group PSFC group stages, a new slate of club and inter-county football rules means everyone starts the year on an even if somewhat unknown footing.

Refreshingly, the West Cork club’s manager is looking forward to the rule changes and feels they will have a positive effect.

“I’m very excited by the changes, to be honest, I think the game of football needed them,” Hayes commented.

Even from a coaching context, training three times a week, unfortunately, a lot of the games took on the guise of blanket defence against blanket defence. It just became incredibly frustrating to coach.

“So I’m really excited by the changes. Football needs it, players and spectators too.”

Whilst most players and spectators will need time to acclimatise to the changes, Seamus Hayes believes that the county’s match officials will be the ones under the most pressure once the action finally gets underway.

“I understand that it’s going to be challenging for a start, and I have great sympathy for the match officials, to be honest,” the Carbery Rangers manager said.

SERIOUS SUPPORT

“I think they’re the ones who are going to be under the most pressure. They are going to need serious support from the clubs, players and management setups to allow this to bed in, right from the start, in the county league. It is going to be a huge learning curve for everybody really.”

2024 proved a frustrating year, to put it mildly, for West Cork club Carbery Rangers.

Relegation from Division 1 of the county football league materialised despite a 4-13 to 4-13 draw with eventual Senior A county champions Carrigaline in Carbery’s final outing at the end of June.

That frustration was only added to by the fact Rangers defeated Premier senior champions Castlehaven earlier in the campaign.

Defeat to the same opponent in the group stages of the McCarthy Insurance Premier SFC was not unexpected but a gutsy comeback to draw with another West Cork rival, Clonakilty, showed what Rangers were capable of.

Alas, a 1-8 to 0-8 loss at the hands of St Michael’s in their opening game meant the Rosscarbery club finished bottom of the group and needed to defeat Éire Óg in a play-off to avoid relegation. A dominant second-half performance saw Rangers register a first PSFC victory since August 2022.

From frustration to a cocktail of relief, elation and happiness for Hayes.

“The year was very frustrating,” Hayes admitted.

“We knew, initially, and given the nature of the competition, that our first county championship game was vital. We really put ourselves behind the eight-ball with that defeat to St Michael’s.

“It was a very poor game, to be honest. We had it in the bag and conceded a goal that was inexcusable really. They ran the length of the pitch without a glove being laid on them and the corner-back buried the ball in the back of the net. So yeah, extremely frustrating.

“Two huge games came afterwards and I thought we performed well against Clonakilty. The Castlehaven game was something you had to go out and try and win to stay in the championship. It didn’t work out on the day, but we created a lot of chances in the second half, and if we had taken a few of them, the game would have been a bit tighter.

In the relegation game against Éire Óg, I felt that some of our younger players stood up on the day. I think that will stand us in good stead for the year ahead.

“We will be down in Division 2 to start things off. We were disappointed to be relegated last year. So, our ambition, definitely, will be to have a right crack off the league and try to get promoted.”