Numbers lay bare the changing face of football 

Pat Spillane didn't agree and described the fare, particularly in that first-half, as 'modern day Gaelic football at its very worst, Gaelic basketball I would call it - without the shooting and the scores'. Social media tended to concur.

Even by modern, defensive standards, a deep dive on the overall 78 minutes and 33 seconds of action revealed some eye-opening statistics, particularly around Galway's possession game. 

Compared further to the final of 20 years ago, Kerry v Mayo in 2004, and to the final of 20 years previously again, when Kerry beat Dublin in 1984, the changing face of the game is laid bare. 

Perhaps the most illuminating stat, showing the journey Gaelic football has gone on over 40 years, is that Dublin hand-passed the ball just 31 times in the entire 1984 final whereas Galway moved the ball through the hand 347 times in this year's final.

Galway won the throw-in at the start of July's decider and proceeded to make 37 passes in a row, 32 of which were hand passes. That snaking game of pass-the-parcel lasted over two minutes and ended with Paul Conroy kicking a long-range point over a sea of orange jerseys as Armagh camped out in their own half. And so the terms of modern engagement were set.

It wasn't until two minutes and 24 seconds in that an Armagh player actually touched the ball, goalkeeper Blaine Hughes.

Fast forward to seven minutes and 30 seconds and Armagh had still only kicked the ball four times - two of those were Hughes kick-outs - despite having scored two points.

Fitzmaurice may have taken the glass-half-full approach with his analysis but it was a tough watch which undoubtedly aided him and the Football Review Committee months later when it came to campaigning for fresh rules.

In all, the first-half of this year's final contained a staggering 306 hand-passes, only two of which failed to find their target. Galway made 187 of those, playing their own game of ball toss for long spells outside Armagh's defensive screen.

The game was barely 90 seconds old and already Galway had daisy chained 14 consecutive hand-passes together. For context, when Fitzmaurice played for Kerry in the 2004 final, the Kingdom's longest chain of consecutive hand-passes was eight.

Traditionalists like Spillane longing for someone, anyone, to put their boot to the ball in the 2024 final were consistently left frustrated. 

Outside of restarts - where players have no option but to kick - Armagh chose to kick the ball just 10 times in the first-half. And while Galway did kick it 37 times in the opening half, it was mostly risk-free keep-ball stuff. So while Galway hit the interval with 66% possession, they only had six points to show for it, the same as Armagh.

'Mind-numbing and boring', was Spillane's take on it all.

A similar analysis of the All-Ireland final of 40 years earlier, which Spillane took centre stage in, scoring four points as Kerry beat Dublin 0-14 to 1-6 in '84, underlines just how much football has changed across five different decades ahead of its latest overhaul.

Whilst Galway's hand-pass to kick-pass ratio in the 2024 final was a whopping 5.9:1, Dublin's was 0.32:1 in '84. Mind you, the amount of butchered hand - and kick-passes in Spillane's era was off the charts. 

Outside of restarts, Kerry opted to kick the ball 40 times in that '84 game and retained possession just 22 times, a 55% success rate that would have modern coaches pulling their hair out. Galway this year, by comparison, retained 95% of their kick passes.

Holding possession in Spillane's era was, of course, much more difficult as players kicked the ball further and often to 50-50 contests. That brought excitement and chaos but none of the cutthroat efficiency that is the calling card of the modern game.

Kerry goalkeeper Charlie Nelligan went long with all 15 of his kick-outs in '84, the norm until relatively recently. But they won just seven of them, retaining only 46% of their kick-outs. Armagh retained 82% of their kick-outs in this year's final. Galway held onto 89%. The rub is that Armagh and Galway both went short with the majority of their kicks, robbing us of the drama of aerial contests.

Kerry scored 14 points in all in the '84 final but shot 10 wides and dropped nine score attempts short. Exciting? For sure. But, again, nowhere near as efficient as the modern game with Heffo's Dublin, who started terribly in that final, completing just 50 of their 95 kick-passes overall.

Kerry, ironically, trumped Dublin 40 years ago partly by cleverly retaining possession and borrowing from the modern script with multiple hand-passes, making seven in a row at one stage. The most Dublin made at any stage of the '84 final was three-in-a-row. In all, Kerry hand-passed the ball 66 times to Dublin's 31.

Tactics weren't a major aspect of '80s football. 

And kicking technique wasn't nearly what it would become 20 years later, when Fitzmaurice was playing. In that 2004 final, for example, there were six points scored - four by Mayo and two by Kerry - which would have qualified as two-pointers under the new 40m scoring arc. This year, Galway and Armagh kicked four points between them which would have been considered long-range scores. There were none in the '84 final.

As if to underline the differing times, veteran Dublin star Brian Mullins suffered a bad gash to his head in '84 which left blood running down his neck. He simply played on. There were no hand-passed points either, the same as in 2004, while Armagh's very first point in this year's final was a fisted score.

The 2004 final does bear more resemblance to the game of 2024, even if Kerry won it at their ease. Yet there still wasn't a single back pass to the goalkeeper in '04 by Kerry or Mayo compared to Armagh passing back to Blaine Hughes 14 times in this year's decider.

The 2004 Kerry goalkeeper Diarmuid Murphy also went long, like his predecessor Nelligan in '84, with all 23 of his kick-outs. It paid off as even without the injured Darragh O Se, Kerry lorded it at midfield.

That was Jack O'Connor's first year as Kerry senior manager and, by that stage, possession was becoming a buzzword. Kerry hand-passed the ball 103 times in the '04 final, their hand-pass to kick-pass ratio coming in at just over 2:1. Mayo's was over 4:1.

Martin Carney noted on commentary that Kerry had moved to a more traditional mix of the catch and kick game for the '04 final, blitzing Mayo early on in particular with long, kicked deliveries to a brilliant inside forward trio of Cooper-O'Cinneide-Crowley who thrived in an era just before sweepers and blanket defences.

Cooper's 25th minute goal all but did for Mayo. Fitzmaurice kicked in the long ball initially and, 20 years later, the former centre-back is a key member of the FRC who figure they have hit upon a plan to bring that sort of play back in vogue in 2025.