Former Donegal captain Nadine Doherty believes the new rules in women's Gaelic football will allow for more consistent refereeing.
The new season is in its infancy with Division 4 of the Lidl Ladies Football League beginning last weekend and the top three tiers returning this coming Saturday and Sunday.
The Ladies Football Central Council met late last year to ratify 12 rule changes ahead of this coming season.
Some of the changes relate to the tackle, in a bid to allow for more physicality in challenges.
But half of the changes have been adopted from the Football Review Committee's rule enhancements in the men's game.
Those include the kickout mark, the two-point scoring arc, the requirement to keep three players in the opposition half at all times, the solo and go, and frees being brought forward for tactical fouling or dissent from the sideline.
However, the kickout rules have not moved in line with the men's game, with short restarts within the 40m arc still allowed.
A Special Congress will take place this spring to decide which of the trial rules will be permanently implemented.
And speaking on RTÉ Radio 1's Inside Sport, Doherty said the changes were a long time coming.
"The biggest problem was you had referees refereeing it in a very different manner," she said.
"So you could go out and play one week, be refereed very strictly, there'd be no hands on. Then the following week you could go out and it would be hell for leather which everybody wants to see.
"So I think now what this does mainly is that it just gives referees that platform now and opportunity to referee it in a more consistent manner, and that's all that players and management want.
"They've always wanted to coach a tackle as such and that tackle has never really been defined and now it is. It's phenomenal I think in that regard."
Highly decorated former Dublin women's senior manager Mick Bohan agreed with Doherty's view in regard to tackle, citing that as a "hugely frustrating" aspect during his time in the game.
"That's been huge that that's been looked at quickly because the game I don't think had gone into the same state as the lads' game had gone to," he said of blanket defences.
"But we were turning a corner whereby it was dangerously approaching a situation where the good game that we once had was disappearing."
Both Bohan and Doherty feel that the new rules will see the code evolve into more of a kicking game than it has been.
Doherty, who cited the tap and go as a rule change she was particularly excited to see, also added that ultra-defensive systems had been starting to become more prevalent in the lower divisions.
"I do agree with Mick that the defensive systems were creeping in. But they were in (already) in lower divisions," she said.
"The game was in a dangerous, precarious situation and I even felt last year, I've watched this game consistently over the last ten years and last year I felt looking outside of Dublin, it was quite poor overall.
"And I do commend the LGFA for acting so quickly. But they knew they had to."
