The clock/hooter will only be in operation for the Division 1 games for the opening two rounds of the Allianz Football League.
And it will operate on a ‘count up’ basis, as opposed to ‘count down’ which is what the Football Review Committee (FRC) had originally planned for.
The software on a number of scoreboards around the country is not currently in place to allow the count-down option and in the interests of consistency it has been decided to operate in the more conventional way.
The GAA’s Central Council approved the clock/hooter guidelines over the weekend. The four Division 1 venues that will see the new timing system in operation are Pearse Stadium in Salthill, where floodlights will be in use for the first time in a competitive inter-county game, for Galway and Armagh, Healy Park in Omagh for Tyrone and Derry, Croke Park for Dublin and Mayo and Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney where Kerry host Donegal.
The following week Dublin are in Ballybofey to play Donegal, Galway are in MacHale Park in Castlebar to play Mayo, Tyrone are in the Athletic Grounds to play Armagh and Kerry travel to Celtic Park in Derry where the stoppages will be timed by a fifth official on the signal of the referee.
The referee will cross his hands above his head to indicate a stoppage and will indicate a resumption of play by rotating one arm. The count-down clock has operated in ladies’ football for many years and the FRC, in notes to the Special Congress, suggested it had brought excitement.
Referees will stop the clock for injuries that require on-field treatment, the application of cards, substitutions, melees or other delays but time will run through for frees, ’45s and kick-outs. In the past referees have factored in the time it has taken for goalkeepers especially to come forward and take frees and ’45s.
Hurling will continue to use the traditional method of timekeeping where it remains at the discretion of the referee when to end a game.
Croke Park has a double bill on Saturday where the Dublin and Antrim hurlers’ opening Division 1B game will be timed differently to the football clash of Dublin and Mayo that follows.
The clock/hooter has had a contentious history and was to be brought in after the 2013 Congress. But trials during third-level college games raised a number of concerns that the system would require rule changes and it was subsequently dropped.
Meanwhile, the guidance issued for head-high tackles will see neck restraint and choke holds incorporated as behaviour which is dangerous to an opponent, a red-card offence.