Paul Rouse: The positives and negatives of the new football rule changes
Mccurry Ulster Takes Referee Of A He Free Instructs Kick Before Coldrick David Darren
1. The single most important aspect of the Interprovincials weekend is that it happened at all. It took a lot of work by a lot of people to get proposed rules to the point where some of the best footballers in the country were lining out to trial them in Croke Park in the middle of October.
While accepting the man of the match award after a semi-final, the Tyrone goalkeeper Niall Morgan made the point that there needed to be change. But that a need existed did not make change inevitable. For example, it took the GAA a very long time to deal with the pulling and dragging that increasingly characterised football in the twentieth century.
Whatever eventually emerges from this process, the first great positive now is that there at least is a process which has moved from theory to practice.
2. A text from a friend midway through the fourth game of the weekend said of the new rules: “I don’t hate them.” This is a version of a double-negative which should be considered a positive.
The big danger for the trials at the weekend was that things would go so poorly that the proposed changes would be lame after the first real hurdle. A calamitous high profile outing would most likely have forced a delay (at best) and may even have essentially derailed the prospects of significant change for a long time.
In short, it would have been hard to recover from a bad first high profile outing.
3. In terms of the specifics of the game, declaring one rule or another a success is pointless at this stage. But if a positive is to be gleaned, it surely lies in the fact that the ball was kicked forward more frequently and with more ambition.
That such a sentence can be written is evidence of both the boring football of recent years and of the need for change.
This is a positive development which must be noted with caution. The stakes were exceptionally low for players making mistakes in the trial matches. The great question is whether the willingness to gamble will endure when league points and championship medals are at issue.
On a personal level, at this stage, if pressed to say whether these new rules are good, I can only honestly say: “I don’t know”. Having watched all four matches, read the committee report, listened to what players and managers are saying, there are enough grounds to say that they merit at least a much longer trial.
1. In the press room under the Hogan Stand, the former Donegal footballer Michael Murphy (whose involvement is a tribute to his stature in the game and to his decency) made a straightforward and vital point. He said he was not wedded to any of the rules in themselves or for their own sake. He believed they merited a trial but that if by the middle of the league (or at any other point) all or any of the rules were clearly not working, then they should be changed.
He’s right, of course. But it was still the case that after the first game on Friday night, people felt able to declare that some aspects of the rules were simply wrong. For example, it was said that the scoring system should not be continued with. Others felt that kicking beyond the 40m arc would not work.
But surely everything should be given a proper go first and dismissing things at first offering is not sensible.
2. If it is clearly premature to celebrate positive impacts of the rules, the same must be said of presuming that any downsides will persist indefinitely. Perhaps all wrinkles will iron themselves out.
But there is food for thought.
After the first match, in truth a mismatch rather than a match, between Connacht and Leinster, the lack of physicality in the game was obvious. Concerns over the absence of tackling lingered across all four matches, despite improvements as time went on.
Gaelic football must have physicality. A running game, where only greyhounds can really prosper, Is not a solution to the existing problems.
As things now stand, it will not be pleasant to be a defender in this new world.
3. The two strongest teams over the trials represented Connacht and Ulster. Watching their skills levels and their conditioning – and hearing their calls echoing around Croke Park – was really enjoyable.
By contrast, Leinster and Munster struggled. In a way, this is something of a reflection of the wider health of Gaelic football across both provinces where Dublin dominate one and Kerry the other.
There were outstanding individual performances from Leinster’s Ciaran Byrne and from Munster’s Killian Spillane, but there is no hiding from the fact that the level that their teams played at was well below what might have been hoped for.