McGee has reservations about the practicality of the proposed kick-out rule, which would insist on there being only two players from each team between the 45-metre lines until the ball is kicked.

“You have to look at the junior club match and can a goalkeeper kick the ball that far on a wet, windy day? What is the point of it (the rule) if by the time the ball has travelled the rest of the players other than the four permitted have made their way to where the ball has flown?

“The theory is good and it’s nice to be doing something about Gaelic football, but I’m worried that some of the rule changes are a bit academic. They might look good for a university professor, but getting down to the 98% who play the game, are they workable? I wonder if they can survive a wet day in Ballymagash or wherever?”

Describing the sin-bin as a “watered down” black card, McGee remarked: “Seventy-eight percent of players don’t ever get near a county team. If you’re involved in a club league match in the middle of February, the only neutral person is the referee and, if this happens, how is it going to be managed? Where do those sin-binned go?

“In rugby, you sit down somewhere for 10 minutes, but where do you go at a club venue? Who’s going to time them? Do they all sit together, even if they are of opposing teams? It sounds trivial now, but it mightn’t be the case if it’s put into practice.”

McGee’s FRC looked into restricting hand-passes too, but felt it might be counter-productive.

However, he revealed an All-Ireland final had also impacted on them.

“The thing about the hand-pass: We had a long discussion about it on the FRC, but in the final the year before (2011) Dublin were found to have kicked the ball about 65% of the time and that stalled us. We did put a strong rider in the report that the prevalence of the hand-pass should be examined in three years, but it was buried.

“The majority of the football world want something done about that hand-pass. You go around the country and it’s ‘that fucking hand-pass’. It turns people off. We were lucky to get the black card through and I think I saw somewhere recently where the average number of black cards per match at inter-county level is 0.9, which is nice to know. It has not been the desecration that some people think it is.

“The rank and file of the GAA, those who go to games every week, want it curbed, but few young people do and less managers, so any attempt to curb it will probably be defeated.”

McGee is certain change is needed, though, as he witnessed this year what he believes was one of the worst seasons of inter-county football.

“I’ve never seen football as bad as it was this year. There was a Leinster double-bill in Portlaoise in May (Carlow v Louth, Offaly v Wicklow) and there was a crowd of just 6,000 there. For four county teams, if we’re gone that low, we’re in trouble. The crowds are running away from football.”