Fogarty Forum: It doesn't augur well for new rules that FRC folded on four-point goal
©inpho/ben During Celebrate Enda Series And The Goal Final A Smith O'shea Interprovincial Aidan Brady Against Ulster Connacht's Picture:
In the interests of avoiding landslide results and possibly over-complicating the scoring system, the Football Review Committee (FRC) last week chose to reduce the value of a goal from four points back to three.
Passed by Central Council on Saturday, Special Congress delegates on November 30 will only be asked to consider two-pointers for balls kicked over the bar from play or frees (not 45s) either outside or on the 40-metre arc.
“We get Division 1 teams against Division 4 teams,” FRC chairman Jim Gavin explained to RTÉ. “If a team from a lower division got behind by two goals, eight points, people felt in that scenario it would be quite difficult."
That inter-county football, and the club scene for that matter, is largely tiered, that teams from the top and bottom rungs of the ladder only face each other once or twice in April, doesn’t seem to have mattered.
The FRC were clearly spooked by what happened last Saturday week when a Connacht team comprising 14 2024 Division 1 players hit Ulster with four goals in a game 10 minutes shorter than a regular senior inter-county game.
Conceding those goals felt harsh to Armagh captain Aidan Forker. "I feel like the scores may be a bit heavily weighted to the goals," said the All-Ireland winning skipper. "I think if you concede a point, it doesn't feel that heavy on you. If you concede a goal, the four points feels quite heavy.
"For me, a 3, 2, 1 would be nice. Four points for a goal, it can knock you. I think teams will set up to not concede goals, because if you concede two or three goals in a game, you're going to struggle to win the game.”
And yet Ulster ended up winning that final on penalties having almost done so in normal time after a two-point attempt dropped short and was palmed to the net for double the reward. The cohesion of the two augmented score components was there for all to see in Odhrán Murdock’s goal.
No, if the FRC truly had reason to be alarmed that their scoring system would further separate the haves from the have-not, it was in Connacht’s win the previous night when they fielded 15 2024 Division 1 players against a Leinster team featuring Dublin’s six and put themselves out of sight with three first-half two-pointers along with an Aidan O’Shea goal.
The FRC’s recommendation for interchanges could arguably do more to widen the gap between counties in Gaelic football. Stronger teams would be given a greater licence to replace like for like and compound the misery for the weaker outfits.
But it’s the four-point goal, a rule change the FRC had argued in briefings they saw working in tandem with the two-pointer, that is sacrificed. Both needed each other. The defending team couldn’t drop back too much in case they create the space for a two-point kick. Nor could they push up too far and gamble gaps behind for a score twice that amount.
In isolation, the two-pointer is under threat. It possibly was prior to the goal returning to three points. Connacht manager Pádraic Joyce spoke of the disparity in score value after beating Leinster last Friday week: “You get two points for a point from 40 metres, you get one from 39 so I don’t know if that will be kept.”
That anomaly remains and now a score from 40m is almost the same as one from four centimetres. Cutting frees outside the 40m arc including 45s to one point makes sense. Devaluing the goal does make the amended advanced mark more of a tool for teams but to exploit its full potential plenty of work will have to be put in.
If the FRC really wanted to improve the scoring system, establishing a demarcation between kicked and handled goals and points would have been an idea. That way, the foot would truly be put back into the game and there may be no need for a 40m arc.
And yet there is for the purposes of kick-outs having to go 20m and increasing the chances of more contested restarts, one of several fine recommendations the FRC have made, the three-up, tap-and-go and 50m punishment among the others. But to fold on their four-point goal does not augur well.
The game as they now see it is set up for sniper assassins more than point-blank killers. As the value of goal has been diminished, the worth of long rangers like Rian O’Neill and Seán O’Shea has shot up.
A yes for the two-pointer on November 30 may even convince Conor McManus to commit to a season number 19 with Monaghan. But without the four-pointer it is in a perilous position.
john.fogarty@examiner.ie
So the pre-season competitions remain suspended but with little stopping counties from simply doubling the amount of challenge games they will play in January, the player welfare argument put forward in support of their axing feels thin.
The last couple of seasons, it’s been the practice of counties to play experimental sides in the January competitions while the first-teamers shook off the cobwebs in challenge games behind closed doors. Those fixtures will now flood the month.
Last week, sensing Central Council might renege on their decision in September, the Gaelic Players Association (GPA) said that inter-county training would have to resume in mid-November as opposed to December 7 if the pre-season competitions returned.
The truth is some counties are already back training. The photographs taken at a centre of excellence last week spread like wildfire across the country. The GAA leadership received them too but will there be any investigations?
Just as the stresses of player welfare were being underlined at a presentation at Central Council on Saturday, possibly to convince delegates not to revive the pre-season competitions, a county was holding a training session. Not trials, as it was otherwise claimed. The GAA can’t pretend to have 20-20 vision and be blind at the same time.
The GPA have announced November as a “zero contact” month for inter-county activity. The game in Cusack Park next Sunday, November 3, between Clare’s All-Ireland SHC winning hurlers and a club All-Stars selection might be more of an exhibition nature and all but certainly received permission to go ahead from Croke Park as a fundraiser for their team holiday to the US, but just three days into this proclaimed initiative and there is certainly contact.
Outside of the pandemic when the GAA felt its reputation was undermined nationally by the training breaches of Cork, Down, Dublin and Monaghan’s footballers, the organisation’s attitude to such challenges to player welfare has been largely indifferent. That is unlikely to change now.
There has rarely been a club weekend as consequential as the one just passed. Three of the previous season’s four senior All-Ireland finalists exiting their county championships (Glen, O’Loughlin Gaels and St Thomas’) after Kilmacud Crokes lost to Cuala the previous weekend, it was a sensational couple of days.
A trawl through the record books indicates that the last time the four finalists failed to emerge from their respective counties was in 2006. Of those who played on St Patrick’s Day earlier that year, Newtownshandrum lost to Cloyne in a Cork semi-final, Loughrea overcame All-Ireland senior hurling champions Portumna in their infamous Galway decider and neither of football’s top two, Salthill-Knocknacarra and St Gall’s, reached their county deciders.
Come January, two new names will be on the Tommy Moore and Andy Merrigan Cups for the fourth year in succession, a further step away from 2019 and ’20 when Ballyhale Shamrocks and Corofin won the top titles in both seasons.
Although they are on their travels again, Ballygunner will be expected to see off first-time Limerick senior winners Doon in this Sunday’s Munster quarter-final. They are the only club remaining in the competition that have previously claimed the All-Ireland senior hurling title since the turn of the century.
From 2000, Ballina Stephenites, Corofin, Dr Crokes and Kilcoo are the previous champions left in the football competition. They may represent the old money but there is an air of novelty after a cataclysmic series of events in Athenry, Derry, Dublin and Kilkenny over seven days.