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Former rules chief hails proposals and hits out at game that’s become...
JARLATH BURNS chaired the previous Standing Committee on Playing Rules which steered through the ‘mark’ for Gaelic football from the kick-out.
It was a simple innovation — though radical in its own way — to reward high fielding and encourage goalkeepers to go long rather than short, the latter often enabling the slow, methodical build-up that allows teams funnel players back.
It squeezed through at Congress in Carlow in 2016. And despite an initial firestorm of criticism, much of which proved unfounded, the move proved an unqualified addition to the game.
So what does Burns think of the five radical changes proposed by the new committee under chairman David Hassan, a bold and pointed response to the defensive systems which prompted a national debate over the future of the game? A three hand pass limit before the ball has to be kicked is just one measure of the radical new changes trialled on Thursday evening in some thirdlevel games.
By comparison, Burns admits the approach of the committee he led was ‘conservative’.
‘We are a Standing Committee on Playing Rules. We’re there to tweak, not to make structural change — that happens every five years,’ he said.
‘But there seems to have been discovered in Gaelic football a design flaw that coaching, training has identified. There is nothing wrong with trying a few radical changes. Basketball do it all the time. Rugby do it all the time. Soccer do it all the time. Let’s not lament our game and say, “We don’t want to do this or do that”.’
Burns famously proclaimed the ‘death of football’ back in 2015 when Derry parked the bus against Dublin in a League game at Croke Park — a harbinger of the times to come.
‘The landscape of Gaelic football was different even three years ago when I took over. The thing seems to have changed quite significantly in the last three years. David Hassan is a brilliant man; fantastically clever fellow; very much into evidenced-based analysis.’
This analysis has seen the new committee provide a radical blueprint for change; a three hand pass limit before the ball has to be kicked; an offensive mark from inside the 20-metre line; a sideline kick where the ball has to go forward; a kick-out set-up where only the two sets of players at midfield can compete; a sin-bin. These are a set of rules to make Burns look as conservative as a deep south Republican.
‘Fair play to them. Radical, outthere, consultation — what’s wrong with it?’
It will be interesting though to see which of the changes will be trialled in the 2019 Allianz Football League, if Central Council give them the green light.
Interestingly, the previous committee did trial the very same hand pass restriction. ‘We tried the three hand passes and found there was an awful lot of mistakes being made by referees.
‘It was an Under-16 competition in Connacht. And it didn’t work at all. There was an incredible rate of mistake by referees. That’s not to say that, if you embedded it and trained referees that it wouldn’t work out. But referees are already counting seconds because of an advantage, they are counting steps, and now you are asking them to count something else.
‘I referee challenge games for our club. You do lose your concentration for moments. If that’s the last five minutes of a game and somebody is through on goal and he takes the fourth hand pass and it’s an All-Ireland final…
‘The thing we always said was, “How would this work on a wet Tuesday in Leitrim? Or the last play in an All-Ireland final”. High stakes if a mistake was made by a referee.’
But he says Gaelic football is evolving in such a way that a guiding hand is needed. ‘It’s to try and get the ball out of that honey pot in the middle of the field. I’m all for change. This is low-risk stuff. We’re not going to Congress with anything. We’re introducing a period of experimentation. If you remember 20 years ago we did the same. We introduced the four quarters; two referees; sideline kick out of the hand. A few got through. We emerged from that period definitely with a better game.’
Burns was on commentary for TG4 last Sunday week for the Monaghan county final when Rory Beggan, the county goalkeeper with arguably the longest, purist boot in the game, failed to clear the 45-metre line with a kick-out into the wind.
What does an incident like that mean for the proposal that the ball must travel past the 45-metre and only two players per team are allowed in the space between those two lines. Does it disqualify the rule as impractical, particularly for the club goalkeeper?
‘If on a few occasions, they didn’t reach the 45, that’s fair enough.
‘You’re moving into the vista of, “Do we introduce a separate set of rules for county and club?” If you were going to do that, you solve every single problem in one go — make the county game 13-a-side. You don’t need any other rules because then you create the space for forwards to operate in. I’m not saying we should do that.’
But even that comes with major reservations. It would only push Gaelic football further along the road to being a running game, put even more primacy on the gym culture, strength and conditioning. It would also, given the extra space for the number of players, do the opposite of putting a premium on kicking or high fielding.
‘We did nothing for our last year, bar bring in the change to the kick-out [so that it has to travel past the 20-metre line]. Is it an option to do nothing? I’m secretary of my club, watched our club play all year, every single game was brilliantly entertaining.
‘There are a number of problems with Gaelic football that are actually nothing to do with the rules. It’s to do with the fact that everyone is wearing these [GPS] vests, everyone is being monitored on the number of passes, possessions they give away. On the Tuesday night they might be treated to a software package that can tell you the number of times the ball was given away, with the result that players have become risk averse, and they’ll hand pass, hand pass.
‘So the game is being played at close quarters.
‘This is not life and death stuff. It is trying out new rules. It’s exciting.’