Rule changes needed to save football from itself

THERE was drama, there was audacity, there was no little skill. On a blisteringly hot day, sun beating down on stand and terrace with conditions perfect for football you’d expect little else from an Ulster football final in St Tiernach’s Park.

Some of the points scored were absolutely top drawer. Sean Cavanagh’s under pressure towards the end. The sliced effort off the outside of Peter Harte’s boot to fire his side into the lead with just seconds remaining. Each of Ryan McHugh’s three points were points to be proud of. Points to admire. Points for the ages.

For a game that lacked quite a lot it was sure capable of throwing up moments of wonder. In between we were treated to football that was about as far from wonderful as you can get. All the worse excesses of the modern game embraced. Hardly any stone was left unturned in the pursuit of caution and control.

The vast majority of kick-outs from both teams were uncontested as both teams funnelled men back into defence, leaving at most one player up in attack as they assumed a defensive posture.

Lines of players massed behind their own forty five waiting for the opposition to carry the ball – slowly and methodically – from the corner-back position forward. Large periods of the game were spent waiting and watching as one team did so without any pressure being applied.

It suited both teams in a way, neither were in any real danger of doing anything – or risking anything – that could come against them. Not being in possession of the ball was almost as effective a way to maintain control as having it.

Only when the attacking team got close to the opposition ‘45 did any sort of pressure come on and even then it was fleeting, maintaining a shape was more important. The result was a string of passes over and back, rarely with any sort of incision, lateral and controlled. Dull as dishwater.

Plenty of people, no doubt, will describe it as fascinating, intriguing, absorbing or any number of other terms. That’s their right. It’s not a perspective we share, however, as you might already have guessed.

Sunday’s match was the most sterile game witnessed in an Ulster final for many a year. That real physical edge for which Ulster football is well known was largely absent, in the first half especially so.

It wasn’t until the second half that Tyrone started to pro-actively press – from deep admittedly – Donegal on the attack. The risk was that by pressing up on them, forcing the contact, that Donegal would break the gain line and create space inside.

The reward was that Tyrone could turn over the ball allowing them to counter attack at pace, giving Donegal less time to drop the iron curtain once again. In the end that’s what won the game for them.

Tyrone were the team trying to make something happen. Donegal were much more passive, deliberately so. Ultimately it cost them. Their system, such as it was, failed to get the best out of their best players.

To play an Ulster final without getting the best out of Michael Murphy and Patrick McBrearty is just criminal. McBrearty is up there with the very best forwards the game has to offer.

By fetishising possession and control, by showing an unwillingness to hit Murphy with the occasional long ball, Donegal played with one hand tied behind their back in an attacking sense.

Granted it’s unlikely they’d have got much joy from such an approach. Their build-up play was too slow, Tyrone had too much time to drop bodies back in front of Murphy and McBrearty.

It all stems from the short kick-out, probably the single most destructive development to the game of Gaelic football in the past ten years. The short kick-out facilities one team dropping everybody back into defence. It necessitates a slow build up by the other.

Fair enough one team can pressure the other’s attempts to go short – witness Galway on Roscommon in the Connacht final – but too often teams use it as an opportunity to set their defence.

Caution and control dominate thinking and that’s not going to change. The only real way of bringing about that change is through the rule book. Joe Brolly’s proposal to force teams to kick-out the ball to beyond the ‘45 has merit.

It should – there are always unintended consequences – bring about a return to more traditional high fielding and, by forcing teams to contest around the middle, will make defensive structures that little bit less all encompassing (maybe it wouldn’t but until we try who knows for certain?).

How likely is all of this? Not very. The GAA is incredibly resistant to change. The sixty six percent rule at congress sees to that. By leaving the rule book largely unchanged the game has changed in a direction that most football people see as destructive.

No other sport in the world would allow that to happen. World Rugby regularly tweaks its rules to allow for a more attractive game. Soccer got rid of the back pass in 1992, they tweaked it further still in 1997.

The GAA has experimented there and there, the mark is being brought in from next January, but in the grander scheme of things football has been allowed evolve without any great influence from the game’s governing body. In world sport that’s very unusual. Given the results such an approach has produced it’s potentially ruinous. Change has gotta come and it’s up to the rule-makers

to bring it.