Negativity suffocates football’s potential
AS A gag, it has little appeal beyond the tired cabaret halls beloved of big hotels and American coach tours. A tourist stops to ask a farmer directions. ‘If I were you I wouldn’t start from here,’ comes the reply. It’s remarkable to think that there are comedians who have actually bought houses on the back of jokes like that one.
And it came to mind this week in the reaction to proposals from the Football Standing Committee for experimental playing rules.
Common consensus has it that the game needs to be improved.
Critics of the new plan just wouldn’t start from here.
So instant has been the criticism, in fact, that one fears any of the planned changes will make it as far as the laboratory of the National League.
Negativity never needs much encouragement in Gaelic football, on the field or off it, but the size of the swells of scepticism and opposition that have gathered are remarkable – and thoroughly dispiriting.
Change should not be welcomed solely for its own sake, and when five major alterations to the playing rules are recommended, it is unsurprising if one or two of them jar.
To these eyes, though, the only discordant note sounded by the committee was that sideline kicks must be passed forwards except inside the opposing 13 metre-line.
Even this makes sense as part of a plan designed to encourage positive play.
And hasn’t that been the plea that rent the championship air throughout the summer?
The game has become dull and uninspired, even as the greatest team to ever play it strengthen their hold.
What is criticised as negative football is often no more than a bid for survival by less talented sides, and it is unfair to excoriate teams and managers for choosing a plan that is within the rules, if ugly to watch.
But as a form of entertainment, football of that nature holds little attraction.
The decline of Mayo and Kerry, two of the few counties outside of Dublin capable of playing football that was both effective and exciting in this age, did not help.
Nor did the tremendous effect of a rejigged championship format in hurling; football has never fared well in comparisons between the two, but it made for an especially unflattering one in 2018.
There was general agreement, then, that football needed help. On sight of the first prescription, though, the reaction has been wearying.
Implementation will be a problem, apparently. Let’s empower linesmen, then, and charge them with ensuring there are only four players between the 45s for kickouts.
But teams will find ways of slowing the re-start, comes the reply. Then demand that referees are swift in punishing such instances with the proposed sanction, a 45metre attacking free.
And that is where the real change must come. Respect for the officials and the laws of the game is barely observed in principle and breached in fact as often as teams get away with it.
This experiment is not imperilled by practical difficulties, but by the disregard for referees, officials and rules that has eaten into football like dry-rot.
The problem with indiscipline is reflected in the watery look of the sin-bin proposal. This would allow a player commit three yellow-card infractions before they finally get sent off.
Critics of it should pause to ask why a committee that has obviously worked hard and with care, came up with such an idea. And it’s clear: because a more stringent change would not have a hope of getting implemented.
Were a sin-bin as used in rugby to be proposed, the outrage would come quickly and loudly. We know this because it happened before, with a version of the disciplinary system failing to survive beyond the pre-season competitions in 2005.
Therefore a heavily diluted system has been floated this time, with, one presumes, the hope that if it takes hold, then a more rigorous version could be introduced gradually, the way a baby is introduced to solids carefully and slowly.
The whinge that this is a plan to Dublin-proof the game is unconvincing, too. They will adapt more quickly and more effectively than any other county, because they have the best players and the best manager. This, indeed, may be the development that finally convinces the stubborn rump of doubters that Jim Gavin really is exceptional. One fears, however, that Dublin’s greatness will be expressed in a more familiar manner for years to come, because this plan, worthwhile as it is, looks doomed to flounder.
Negativity is a problem in football, long after the last whistle sounds.