Longford star Mickey Quinn says the new three handpass limit rule makes no sense to him.

The new experimental rules for football were implemented this weekend as the 2019 season got underway with the first round of the O’Byrne Cup taking place.

Speaking after Longford’s one-point win over Wicklow on Saturday, Quinn was clearly not a fan of the new handpass law which he felt saw 80pc of the kick-passes “going backwards”.

"The handpass one is the biggest concern," he told the Irish Independent. "From what I have seen it just doesn't make sense at all. Teams drop off and wait for the kick-pass. They don't press for the first couple of handpasses and then they put the squeeze on.

"What was clearly obvious the other night was that there's the first handpass and someone comes at pace and gives it to another man, the other man thinks, 'There's two hand passes already I have to be looking to kick-pass or give it to man who is in a kick-passing position'. So a quick counter-attack turns into a backwards kick-pass just to be safe.

"At the beginning it was, 'Kick it, kick it', and it was just turnover after turnover. I'd love to see the stats done, how many kick-passes after the second or third handpass were positive or negative yardage passes? I think 80pc of the kick-passes are going backwards which is completely against what you are trying to do."

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