BIG BOYS’ CLUB 2.0
Proposed rule changes work to advantage of game’s tallest
MUNICH is a city which has something for everyone. Where a night out can offer a tale of the unexpected.
It’s many moons since the decision to head on to a nightclub in the company of two Bavarian friends turned into a surreal experience. Not blessed with height, or a discerning knowledge of the local lingo, the first sign that something was amiss came when the pair shared a laugh with the bouncer at the expense of their Irish guest. While the small dancefloor was packed with people who had to duck heading through doorways, a projector to the side flashed up the names and images of various well-known personalities on a screen, including from the world of sport. And so up popped the boxer Vitali Klitschko along with one vital statistic – height: 2.01m.
Cue a conversation with local hosts Gunther and Juergen. Club 2.0? ‘For tall people,’ they said. ‘2.0 means two metres.’
So not some 21st century reboot as otherwise imagined. It was a club specially designed to cater for those of, or approaching, a certain height.
The same premise might as well underpin Gaelic football’s new set of rules proposals. Welcome to the game’s ‘Club 2.0’, where the first drink is free if you are heading for the two-metre mark — or the first catch, perhaps.
Of the five radical changes proposed by the GAA’s Playing Rules Committee, two have been designed with the game’s ‘big man’ in mind, a once-significant player until the advent of a modern era which puts a premium on athleticism and metres covered.
The ‘mark’ from a kick-out was brought in to redress the balance somewhat. It has been an unqualified success in encouraging the goalkeeper to go long, rewarding the fielder (rather than seeing him gang-tackled and turned over), and putting a value on high-fielding as a cherished skill.
But to extend it to the clean catching of the ball in the full-forward line (on or inside the 20metre line from a kick delivered on or beyond the 45-metre line without it touching the ground) is to tinker in a far more radical fashion with the scoring dynamics of a game.
That a player making a catch in the inside line can earn himself an uncontested shot at the posts makes Gaelic football akin to Aussie Rules. It disrupts the fundamental flow of attacking play and quite literally, plays into the hands of a breed of player above the six foot mark, or one who comes closest to Club 2.0.
There is no truth yet in the rumours gathering in Kerry that Kieran Donaghy might come out of retirement for 2019… along with Darragh Ó Sé, Mike Quirke, Jack O’Shea and Mick O’Connell.
Donaghy must be wondering if he went a year too soon. His neartelepathic understanding with the Kerry forwards around him, particularly Colm Cooper, was a big part of what made him the player he was. The capacity to leap in the air as if launched from a trampoline and pluck the ball from the clouds was just one part of the act.
While the option is there to play on, it’s hard not to think that a catcher’s first instinct near the posts will be to take the free shot. This reduces the chances of manufacturing a goal opportunity, interrupting the flow of an attack and removing the eternal question of how to engineer a score.
What’s more, it does little to serve the art of defending, reducing the relevance of a defender’s ability to tackle, dispossess and strip away possession.
The kick-out zoning rule has so many loose threads waiting to be pulled.
That just two players from each team shall be positioned between the two 45-metre lines, and the goalkeeper and a maximum of six players from each team shall be behind the respective 45-metre lines until the ball is kicked, is
another coup for ‘the big man’. There’s an argument that the swathes of space will just as easily favour a speedster such as Jack McCaffrey but it’s clearly designed with height and a clean catch in mind.
The committee that proposed the most radical set of rule changes to Gaelic football is not some bunch of outside renegades. Frank Murphy, rules guru and godfather of the twin GAA pillars of Cork and Congress, is on it.
So too Brian Cuthbert, someone who has coached at all levels and whose standing is such that he was a keynote speaker at the association’s Games Development Conference in Croke Park at the start of this year. Chaired by Derry’s David Hassan, you have to admire their chutzpah.
They deserve credit for sticking their heads above the parapet and creating an important conversation about the best way forward for Gaelic football.
But the root cause is defensive systems that involve teams withdrawing double digit bodies behind the ball when not in possession. Treat that, and you remove the need for five different pills for the symptoms —, the keep ball that Dublin have perfected, for example.
The game is as much about a ‘Gooch’-style corner-forward as it is about a Donaghy-style target man. There has to be a better way than catering to one above the other.
Otherwise, Gaelic football is in danger of turning into a bastardised version of Aussie Rules where those of a certain height get a free scoring pass.