When making camels out of horses, it may help to wet your whistle
IT HAS long been said that a camel is just a horse designed by committee. But then, once you allow for the obligatory mother-in-law jokes, committee think tanks are the staple diet of old style comic stand ups — a committee is a group that keeps minutes but loses hours… boom, boom.
But the news this week that a group was being convened to review the state of Gaelic football tickled our interest.
With good reason, too. While those who argue that the constant tinkering with rules has done Gaelic football few favours have a point. Until competitive balance is achieved, there is little that can be done to make the game a compelling spectacle (outside of Ulster) in early summer. And such balance will not happen until the provincial championship formats are shelved.
However, the right rule changes can make football a better game to play and an easier one to watch, but the process in achieving this has to be right from the outset.
And the latest committee, for all the gravitas that the likes of Pat Gilroy, Billy Morgan and Michael Murphy bring to it, has a glaring omission.
There are current and past managers, players and administrators included but, once again, the one voice that will go unheard in the initial stages, is that of intercounty referees.
From the Football Review Committee (FRC) which published its report in 2012, to the 2018 Standing Committee on Playing Rules, to the latest review group, we make it that 25 people have sat on those committee, but not one has been a present or former intercounty referee.
Cork’s Frank Murphy, who was a member of the 2018 committee, technically bucks that trend, but his history as a hurling whistler from the 1970s meant he hardly qualified as a representative of the football refereeing fraternity.
‘I think the failure not to include referees in committees that inevitably end up proposing rule changes which referees have to police is a huge oversight,’ former inter-county referee Maurice Deegan told the IMoS this week.
He is not wrong. The biggest rule change that the FRC was responsible for was the introduction of the black card to deal with cynical fouling, and while it has been a success to a point, the reality is that by being prescriptive in nature, it has led to the anomaly that only some cynical fouls are dealt with, while other non-proscribed offences are not.
For example, the pulling back of a player instead of the pulling down of a player are dealt with differently, even though the cynical intent may be the same.
Had referees a presence on the FRC, they may well have argued that allowing them the discretion of differing between a ‘professional’ foul and one not rooted in cynicism, would have addressed that flaw.
Similarly, would the introduction of the advance/defence mark have happened if a referee was on hand to point out the ludicrous situation of a match official being asked to police a rule with so many moving part.
Rule changes have to be pragmatic in nature and not getting the viewpoint of referees charged with policing them is a bad place to start.
Invariably, that is why the thoroughbred supposed to have been bred ends up with two humps on its back.