ADVANCE MARK IS RUINING THE GAME
A title will one day be decided by this farcical new rule
“Leave football alone and stop tinkering”
ALAN Dillon is a man of many parts. Meet the sitting TD who rattled the net for Ballintubber in the Mayo senior football championship on Saturday evening.
Who togged out 134 times for his county over the course of 15 seasons, 66 times in championship.
A two-time All-Star and Mayo captain who exhibited the kind of quiet leadership and integrity that constituents felt deserved a vote when he entered the political arena and togged out for Fine Gael in the last election.
Thirty eight years old next month, when he likely wraps up his football career after the current campaign, he deserves to be lifted on shoulders in the tradition of those winning TDs on election night.
In a fascinating interview with Micheal Clifford in the Irish Mail
on Sunday, he revealed how sport and politics don’t mix – at least in terms of trying to find the time to juggle an amateur hobby with his day job.
It said a lot that on the subject of Gaelic football, he felt compelled to skip past the PR and gloss of the games simply being back and register his dismay at a personal bugbear – the advance mark.
It’s the headline rule change that is only now being properly seen in action all over the country as club championships start coming to boiling point.
Brought in as part of a package of changes by the Standing Committee on Playing Rules, passed at Special Congress last October but which are only being seen in full as 2020 unfolds, it means that a player can call an ‘advance mark’ for any kind of catch made inside the opposition 45 metre line – once the ball has been kicked and travels at least 20 metres in open play. A defender, too, can call a version of same from any kick from outside the ’45.
It says a lot when a player with such a wealth of experience and knowledge says it has no future in the game.
‘It is a regressive step. I don’t think the introduction of the attacking mark is something that will speed up players’ kicking ability.
‘It kills the art of players having the ability to create opportunity out of nothing. The benefits don’t outweigh the negatives.’
He spoke of how alien it is to be granted a free-kick for merely catching a ball cleanly after it has travelled 20 metres. How it almost felt like a different sport when he returned to play under the new rules that also see all kick-outs taken from the 20 metre line, a ban on the back pass to the keeper from a kick-out, and the introduction of a 10-minute sin-bin. How the changes could well hasten any decision to hang up his boots for good.
‘Speaking from my own experience, the first ball I caught in a league game against Claremorris, I did simply not have a clue what I was doing with the mark.
‘I over-carried the ball, I had to put my hand up to call the free – there was just confusion.
‘On top of all that, outside of the player’s perspective, you are asking the referee to do an awful lot more and for what benefit?
‘Leave the game alone and stop tinkering with it. We have seen from the inter-county changes that they have not significantly changed the game apart from the midfield mark which has been a positive, but other than that what good has been delivered?
‘Let’s keep the game as simple as possible and bringing this into club level is not conducive to good football or, I believe, to players and supporters enjoying the game in the way they did.’
From the outset, this column has stated its opposition to the rule change. Lockdown hasn’t changed that. Last week, I watched Ratoath host Ballinlough in minor championship, Division Four. A good test of whether it can function effectively off Broadway at club level.
It certainly didn’t on the night in question. Two instances in the second half summed up the element of farce around it.
The opposition full-forward made a good catch and turned to take his man on.
The sound of the referee’s whistle immediately caught him off guard. He simply stopped – as did most of the players in his vicinity. When the referee’s expression meant the penny dropped, the game moved from freezeframe to normal motion.
Not long after, a visiting defender made a great catch under pressure from a high ball in as Ratoath chased the needed goal. Put his hand up to claim a mark.
The whistle hadn’t blown though because he noticed the kick had come in from just inside the 45 metre line – with the line of bodies in his way and all the pressures of marking a man and trying to make a catch, the defender clearly thought it came from outside the 45.
A 20 metre punt pass to a forward’s chest that results in an uncontested free is not Gaelic football. Not as we know it. Not as the history and tradition of the game knows it. It’s also cruel punishment for any defender who concedes a yard to any knacky, elusive forward. So many elements of it are counter-intuitive. From an attacker’s point of view where every good forward looks to take on his man, beat his marker, break the tackle – not come to
a literal stop and put his hand up in the air. From a coaching point of view for so many of the same reasons – and that age-old guide of ‘play to the whistle’. From a refereeing point of view where the natural flow of a game is so important, to avoid a stop-start approach that involves constant whistling and which drives players and spectators alike mad.
On a recent Our Game episode, journalist Paul Fitzpatrick of the Anglo Celt talked about the confusion that is extending from juvenile to adult level. Told a story from a recent Cavan senior football championship between Castlerahan and Shercock. How he heard one of the players reminding his teammates before the throw-in: ‘don’t forget to put your hand up’.
How surreal it was to hear fellas being reminded of the rules of the game, players who had played Gaelic football all of their lives. At one point in the same game, a player stopped dead after making the catch – only for the referee to punish him and throw the ball up because he forgot to put his hand up to signal the mark.
Come the business end of championship, as teams realise its potential, it will become a more significant feature of the game. And the more significant it gets, the more disastrous it is for the game. It’s only a matter of time before a title will be decided by the advance mark – and that will be no good thing for Gaelic football.