We owe it to football to give rules a chance

ARE football people ever happy? Or is it simply the case that the only thing that makes them happy is their unhappiness. We seem to positively wallow in it. Happy as a pig in the proverbial. There’s nothing more that a football person likes than something to give out about.

Championship structures – out-dated, not fit for purpose – the Dubs – too good, too wealthy, too powerful – the state of the game – wouldn’t cross the road to watch it, ruined by science and stats – and whatever else you’re having yourself – refs, the Sunday Game, Joe Brolly.

The strange thing is that, for all the general disquiet about the state of the game, the thing a sizeable number of football folk seem to dislike most of all is change.

The ink was hardly dry on the statement about the experimental rules to be trialled – remember that word, it’s important – during the National League, before people were out picking holes and finding fault.

We read one piece this week in a national newspaper decrying the proposed hand-pass rule on the basis that several famous goals from the last ten to fifteen years would have been disallowed under the new rule... Well, to quote Scotty from Star Trek, if my granny had wheels she’d be a wagon.

For once can we please give these new rules a chance before we denounce them out of hand. It may very well turn out that they’re not fit for purpose, but let’s see how they work in practice first. That’s the entire purpose of a trial.

We owe it to the game of football to approach the new rules with an open mind. We especially owe it to the people who put their head above the parapet and tried to do something positive for the old game.