FIT FOR... A&E

Gaelic football is not in terminal decline but some minor surgery is needed to tackle its current ills

TRY as we might, we are struggling to feel the pain of Gaelic football’s wailing classes this week. Perhaps it is because we have had our senses numbed by being over-exposed to Ulster’s way, but at no stage did we feel the urge to fling ourselves from the press box in Clones last Sunday in protest at a spectacle that some felt desecrated the memory of those that graced St Tiernach’s Park in the past.

We are not quite sure who has ownership of football’s gloried past, which is now the subject of this alleged betrayal, and uncovering that identity has been a struggle.

We have lived through the ’70s and ’80s when the handpass was the root of all evil, the ’90s when the game’s indiscipline was deemed sickening, the noughties when Pat puked on our behalf because swarm defences wreaked havoc with sensitive stomachs, right up to the current quilted blanket weaved in Donegal but now a snug fit for all.

Of course, last Sunday’s Ulster final was, for 60-odd minutes, the kind of video nasty which, if the Yanks got hold of, would be played on a loop down Guantanamo way, but then it was always going to be the kind of show best caught live.

The result was the bottom line and while that was in doubt, it kept 33,000 bolted to their seats, so the tedium does not penetrate quite like it might in your front room.

Even so, the feigned outrage was a little much. After all what were people expecting when there is a meeting of two teams who are built on structured defence, are sustained by turnovers and sting best on the counter?

Inevitably, it was Jim McGuinness’ critique that grabbed most eyes, not least because of his fractured relationship with Rory Gallagher, but for the most part he was on the money.

Except what baffled was that he was baffled.

‘For me it seemed like they couldn’t penetrate. But there is a rhetorical question to be asked here as well: were they not able to penetrate or did they not want to,’ he queried. The answer to that was more likely the latter. After all, McGuinness (below) oversaw that much first and in the final painful minutes of his own reign in the 2014 All-Ireland final. One of the defining images of that game was the sight of Donegal bunkered deep in the closing minutes while chasing a one-score game as Kerry murdered the clock, retaining possession by moving the ball crab-like across the field unchallenged. It was left to an enraged Michael Murphy to shake them out of their stupor for an unsuccessful final rally. It is hard to argue from a positon of strength that Donegal, while leading, should have taken a more aggressive stance last weekend when your own team could not find it in themselves to do it when they had to go chase a game. As Kerry refused to engage in 2014, Tyrone did last weekend and when left in a stand-off, the only possible intrigue is down to who blinks first and who errs most. It remains the great weakness in the blanket blueprint that teams now know that the best way to play against it is to not play at all. Therein lies the dilemma for the game. GAA president Aogán Ó Fearghail rightly suggested this week that the game is ever evolving, and pointed out to all those who pine for ‘catch and kick’ that almost 50 years ago the former Down captain Joe Lennon pointed out that football was essentially a ‘possession game.’ All true, but Lennon could hardly have envisaged that football would get so hooked on the possession bug that a team could have 38 individual possessions in one sequence of play – as Donegal did in the second half of the Ulster final – as they ploughed a path over and back the pitch without feeling the heat of a single Red Hand, while keeping ball for keep’s sake. Yet, the temptation for the GAA

not to be lured into reactionary rule changes is understandable, not least because evolution has served the game well. After all, the frowned upon handpass epidemic of the ’70s also gifted football that Dublin/Kerry rivalry; the rough-house ’90s brought democracy and the raw-boned presence of Meath; the swarm gave us Tyrone and perhaps the most shuddering game of ball very played in that 2005 semi-final against Armagh, while Donegal thrilled in winning that 2012 Championship.

That said, the curtailment of the handpass, the harder-line on rough play, and the introduction of the black card to counter cynical fouling serves as a reminder that evolution through the ages has also needed direction.

We have reached the point of intervention again. The game is not broken as some would have you believe, but it needs assistance in ensuring that it returns to being one where teams have to physically engage.

There are a couple of obvious routes to go down. Abolishing the short kick-out by legislating it crosses the 45-metre line might lead to traffic chaos around the middle, but it would at least force teams to win hard ball again, and that process alone might stir the blood of those playing and watching. Such a step could light a spark.

An offside rule, limiting the number of attacking players that can cross the half-way line has been out there for an age, but is surely worthy of a trial in the hope that it might just open enough space to encourage teams to take a gamble and attack the channels.

We really don’t know if those changes would work, but history tells us that the game has always had the wit to adapt.