DON’T MISS: THE WIT, WISDOM AND WITHERING EDGE OF MICHEÁL CLIFFORD’S COLUMN
Football’s new proposals look wistfully to the past of catch and kick while failing to tackle the issue of massed defensive gameplans which are forcing spectators to look and stay away
LEGISLATORS HAVE A DUTY TO PROTECT FOOTBALL
SOMEWHERE caught in the middle of Frank Murphy’s rulebook and Groucho Marx’s gag book, reason is crying out to be heard. Mind, you will do well to hear it given the inevitable din of hysteria which greeted this week’s release by the GAA’s Standing Committee on Playing Rules’ five proposed rule changes to Gaelic football which it is asking stakeholders to digest, prior to them being trialled in the Allianz League.
Inevitably, on first tasting, the general response has been less than positive.
On one hand that is understandable, given the scattergun approach taken by the committee who would have done well to remember Groucho’s damning take of legislators.
‘Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies,’ quipped Marx, who was well known for his advocacy of the sin-bin.
On the other, though, it is also depressingly familiar that those closest to the game fail to see flaws that are quite literally forcing people to look and stay away.
This summer’s underwhelming football Championship offered no shortage of evidence, with declining attendances – even if the gross figure by the end of the season will not reflect it due to the extra four games in the All-Ireland series.
The All-Ireland semifinals provided the lowest combined aggregate in over a decade – even Dublin barely attracted over 50,000 for their win over Galway, with Tyrone and Monaghan bringing in less again.
It can be argued that those figures demand to be viewed in the context of suffocating inevitability of how the whole shooting match would play out, but that does not explain why the people have also turned their backs on the game’s most celebrated democracy.
For the second successive summer, attendances nose-dived in Ulster where numbers coming through the turnstiles fell by a massive 28 per cent from 2016, and you can’t pin that one on Dublin.
The game’s the thing, then, and not a very good one either. Not that you would know, so quick were some to batter these proposals before they even raised their head for debate – although not all are blessed with Turlough O’Brien’s turn of phrase.
‘I can’t understand why they’ve done it. They’re saying, “you’ve got to play a certain way, and the way is simple; 1940s catch and kick and wear your flat cap,”’ remarked the Carlow manager.
We can understand why. O’Brien earned Carlow promotion to Division 3 and led them to a Leinster semi-final final, but it has been achieved on the back of a massed-defence, possessionbased gameplan which has served his team well, but is awful to watch.
We got to see their Leinster semi-final in the flesh – a winnable game against fellow Division 4 opponents in Laois and it wasn’t a flat cap we were looking for but a night one by the end of it.
It is O’Brien’s prerogative to set up as the rules allow – and he has done so magnificently to his credit – to ensure that his team max out on their competitive potential, but there is a duty on GAA legislators to protect the game.
Where he is absolutely right is in stressing that no game is served well by looking wistfully to the past as the blueprint for its future.
That has been the biggest shortcoming of these proposals with the emphasis put back on the kicking and catching game. It ignores the fitness, athleticism and game smarts that has elevated the combined skill-set to a place that Mick O’Connell’s fingertips could never reach.
In short, they have misdiagnosed the problem with the inevitable consequence that the remedies they have come up with fail to address what really needs changing.
That is not to say that they must all be binned, but over the next month they need to be reworked so that they come some way to facilitating an evolving modern game, rather than resurrecting one best left in the museum.
For example, restricting the handpass to three passes is worthy of at least being trialled but it needs to be tapered so that the differentiation is made from its abuse as a way to retain possession in defence, and its utilisation as a potent attacking weapon at the other end.
That could be facilitated by allowing for unlimited use of the hand-pass when teams are inside the attacking 45-metre line. The notion of expanding the mark to inside the 20-metre line and that exclusion zone around the middle of the field for kick-outs seem so utterly bizarre and out of touch with how the game has developed that rather than argue against it, it might be best to hope it goes away.
But there is some merit in demanding that all kick-outs cross the 45metre line – the line peddled that this would make the game no country for small men, ignores the reality that most team sports exploit size and strength in certain positions.
The even more ridiculous argument is that this rule can’t be enforced because junior club goalkeepers will be permanently hamstrung by the demand is easily sorted – move all restarts to the 20-metre line.
This is the conversation that should be taking place for the next month, but it really is one that should have taken place over the last couple of months.
Had that happened, the committee might just have discovered that the problem is massed defence and the solution might be an ‘offside rule’ which would demand that teams keep a certain number of players inside the 65metre line, perhaps a minimum of three forwards and backs at any one time.
It is a simple proposal that holds the promise of changing the dynamic on the solid grounds that mass defence does not work without, well, mass.
Alas, in not opting for a single proposal gifted with clarity of purpose, this committee turned back down a forgotten road no longer travelled.
But at least in doing so they have put change back on the table.
It is up to those who will be consulted – managers, coaches, players and match officials – to make these proposals better and at least worthy of trial.
If they don’t, not even Groucho will be able to put a smile on the face of this game.