Basketball lessons for FRC's new rules: A Donaghy will now be more valuable than a Cooper

To be fair to the process they couldn’t have assembled a better group to come up with the proposals and I really do hope they work.

Over the past few years, some of basketball’s language and tactics have become a bigger focus within football. 

Most of it is just common sense around turnovers and minding the ball, but there are also more set plays and structured movements than we probably would have seen growing up. 

I’ve always thought that one of gaelic football’s biggest downfalls has been the homogeny of tactical thought. 

Sports like basketball and football are fortunate to have coaches from countries like Argentina and Serbia trying to solve the same puzzle and coming up with varying approaches in doing so. Obviously, within Ireland, the variety of approaches doesn’t exist, so when tactically cautious defensive systems have success, it’s hard to break them up.

These rules are another way to break them up and I think they’ll certainly change the way teams approach the game. Whether that’s going to be all for the better, I’m not yet convinced.

I think some of the practical challenges talked about are straightforward. Three players in the half and the new limitations on pass-backs to keepers sound complicated but will become the norm overnight. 

I think the biggest challenges will be for inter-county referees. In basketball, we have the three-point line and one of the hardest things for referees to keep track of, is whether a player is behind the line or not. 

In a tight space with three referees, it can be hard to call — so trying to track it in Croke Park where your umpires will be so far from the action is going to be even harder.

Marginal decisions on foot placement can decide a game. In basketball, it might impact one out of 80 or 100 points, but in football, the significance will be so much more pronounced. 

I don’t envy a referee trying to make those calls in the moment, especially when it hasn’t been a requirement for them to date.

The other tough rule for referees is the solo and go. I actually really like the rule and it will add to the pace and flow which is what Jim Gavin and his team want to emphasise. With that pace and flow though, comes huge physical burdens on the players and referees. 

If the ball starts moving quickly with foot passing too, I think referees are going to be left behind. 

It’s already hard for one ref to monitor the whole field, and to do so for a whole game without fatigue impacting decisions. If the pace does increase like hoped, I can’t see how two referees won’t become a necessity.

Those issues are manageable and shouldn’t stop the new rules. What I think will be far more interesting is the tactical implications. Starting with the new scoring system, I think it’s going to completely change how teams attack. 

When I saw the rules, my first thought was that teams need to find the biggest players they can capable of catching a ball. 

A Kieran Donaghy becomes far more valuable than a Colm Cooper. Why? Because of the way the rewards are set.

In basketball in the NBA, when the 3-point line was introduced, teams didn’t adjust much and shot just two threes a game for the first five years. 

It took 10 years for it to reach double-digit attempts per game from long distance. Since 2019 when analytics fully took over basketball, we haven’t had lower than 32 attempts per game on average.

The rationale is simple, there’s a term called expected value for every shot, which is simply the probability of success multiplied by the points given for that shot. 

In basketball, threes are now shot at such a high rate that closer-in contested shots are actually seen as bad options in analytics, as you can shoot a lower percentage from three and still have a higher expected value per shot.

Statisticians all over Ireland will now be figuring out their expected percentages from behind the arc and whether they can make enough to warrant going for the lower percentage two-point shot more often. But there’s a major difference in Gaelic too. 

Going back to the Kieran Donaghy idea, there’s also huge value now in shots dropping short on long-range efforts. 

If you drop it short but have a forward like Donaghy to claim it as a mark, he can now continue to try to score a four-point goal. If it doesn’t work, they are still be rewarded with the mark and an easy point.

That is an incredible incentive to try long-range efforts, as it leads to multiple possible scoring outcomes. 

It’s why defensive teams will still crowd the goal area to break up those opportunities and why managers will be looking to the local basketball team for the next athlete capable of fielding for them like Donaghy or Michael Darragh Macauley.

My worry long term, which won’t be seen this weekend, is that the rules favour big athletes who can field in one one-on-one battles and get up and down the field. Will the magic of a pacy or creative corner forward be minimised? 

Jim Gavin has said that a small Cavan forward excelled in the new format and it reinforced their hopes, but I still fear size will outrank skill long term.

The last thing I fear is that we’ll still see what Eamonn Fitzmaurice described as stalemate football. If teams have a lead late on, I fully expect them to bring up their keeper over the halfway line and with increased space, play piggy in the middle and keep the ball, with their 11 outfielders and goalkeeper vs the opposition’s 11 defenders and a goalkeeper stuck in goal. 

Nobody wants to see it but we could have some frustrating cagey ends to games as teams kill the clock.

What may have solved a lot more problems is a limit on consecutive handpasses to one or two in a row. That would have forced the kicking skills to be more significant and teams would naturally have moved the ball up the pitch faster to avoid turnovers in the wrong areas.

I’m sure these questions have been raised before and I’m excited to see the games in operation. If we can speed the game up 10-15%, it would have an impact. Hopefully, people give the proposals a chance and we get the improved spectacle the game deserves.