THE ABRUPT changes to the hand-pass rule left both managers baffled. John Evans had called referee David Coldrick to the Tipperary dressingroom before the match to ask for his interpretation of the rule.

The official then paid a similar call to the Kerry team.

“We are in shock with these rules,” declared Evans, still bursting with energy after the match. He shook his head when asked about the imposition of the rules and recalled his days sitting on school interview boards, where the trick was weeding out what he termed “intelligent fools”.

“Not that it affected the result one bit. I think that intelligent fools got through to administrate this stuff here. This is silly, lads, it is beyond belief. You have to have practicality going on in the game. In fairness to Dave, he tried as best he could. This is going to take from the auld game, lads.

“But I am delighted with our team and with the occasion. I am delighted with the effort we made and, jeepers, they are a good team, lads.”

Jack O’Connor seemed fairly relaxed and had good reason to be but he too became animated when asked about the new hand pass.

“This is a massive change in a skill that the players have been practising for the last 15 years and suddenly they hear about a change two weeks before the championship. It is mind- boggling. I don’t know where it came from.”

In the first half, Kieran Donaghy was frustrated after being whistled for what looked to be a fair hand-pass to Bryan Sheehan, whose goal was disallowed.

“I actually thought that was a legal pass,” said O’Connor. “Even though it was over-hand or whatever, it was a closed fist. Of course, David Coldrick is going to get one or two calls – in some match down the line, there is going to be a critical call that will cost a team a match and all hell will break loose.

“Someone, somewhere, was just determined to get that rule through by hook or by crook. There is no other game in the world where you would change a fundamental skill and give the players two weeks notice of it.”

In the tunnel, Ciarán McDonald stood wearing Donaghy’s shirt inside out. The Aherlow man never quit on what was ultimately an impossible task. McDonald is one of the players who responded in wonderful fashion to John Evans’ management, but he was caught in two minds about the experience of playing the All-Ireland champions.

“It was the opposite to last year – we had a landslide in the first half and then we got it together in the second half,” he began.

“I was looking forward to marking him,” he said of Donaghy. “If you want to be the best, you have to take on the best. And he is the best. That is the way it goes.

“We hadn’t thought about the qualifiers, Kerry was our target. I don’t know what to say really. I’m just very disapp- ointed.”