The long and the short of it: how Galway kick on with new rules will tell us plenty
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In only a slightly alternate reality, Galway would head to Newbridge to play Kildare this Saturday evening as All-Ireland champions.
Had the new two-point arc been in place for last July's All-Ireland final, Galway, and not Armagh, would have won that game.
Paul Conroy, later crowned Footballer of the Year, kicked three long-range points that by any mathematical estimation were outside 40 metres.
The first of those was the game's opening point and the big midfielder slotted two more from downtown either side of the half-time break.
Niall Grimley's terrific 62nd minute point for Armagh would have doubled up as a two-pointer also under the new rules for 2025.
But as impressive as Rian O'Neill and Oisin O'Neill points were in the 41st and 65th minutes, our best estimate is that they fell just inside where a 40m arc would have applied.
All of which means a game that Armagh won by 1-11 to 0-13 would have actually finished 0-16 to 1-12 in Galway's favour. Interestingly, Galway would have been 0-10 to 0-6 up early in the second-half, instead of 0-7 to 0-6.
And so Saturday's trip to Newbridge to face Kildare in the freshly minted St Conleth's Park stadium would have been a first outing of 2025 for the Sam Maguire Cup holders.
It won't be, of course, and there's no guarantee had the new rules been in place last summer that any of those scores would have materialised anyhow.
Conroy's first score was a case in point, coming after winning the throw-in and daisy-chaining 37 consecutive passes together. The game was in its third minute at that stage and with Armagh camped out in their own half, Conroy figured it was worth a pot-shot from distance.
The new rules won't allow for Armagh, or any other county team this year, to pull more than 11 outfield players back behind the ball in their own defence.
With more space available to exploit as a result, Galway will be incentivised to kick earlier and more often into their attack.
Between themselves and Armagh, they kicked just 14 balls into their forwards in last July's final, a game that ran to almost 78 minutes.
This was a point that Galway boss Joyce addressed when involved with the Connacht team for the Interprovincial tournament in October, played under the new rules.
"We were criticised ourselves in the final for going lateral and backwards, it's alright people saying that but it's very, very hard to try to kick the ball when you've got 15 (defenders) inside," said Joyce. "And you've got six players around your full-forward line."
That sort of extreme blanket defending simply won't be possible this year. So will Galway kick the ball more and fully exploit Rolls Royce forwards like Shane Walsh, Damien Comer and Rob Finnerty? The revised advanced mark offers further incentive and the expectation is that they will.
Outside of restarts, Galway actually chose to kick the ball 59 times in the Sam Maguire decider. That stat is similar to Dublin's 66 kicks in the 2020 All-Ireland final. And it even stacks up well against a game from the distant past like, say, the fourth game between Dublin and Meath in 1991, when the Dubs kicked the ball 50 times.
The big difference with Galway's kicks last July was that most of them were, as Joyce noted, safe ones, sideways and backwards. Alongside this, they hand-passed the ball a staggering 347 times, compared to Dublin's 221 in the 2020 final.
Joyce will rightly point out that Armagh set the terms of engagement, leaving Galway to toss the ball around for long spells just outside the scoring zone, but breaking away from old habits will still be challenging.
Galway goalkeeper Connor Gleeson took five passes from team-mates in the final. Those won't be permitted this Saturday, or any time in 2025, unless both players are in the large rectangle or if Gleeson has crossed the half-way line.
Gleeson's kick-out strategy against Kildare will also be intriguing. He went long with 14 of his 18 in the All-Ireland final, winning 16 of the 18. That's a retention rate just shy of 90% that he'll be doing well to replicate in any 2025 game.
One inter-county goalkeeper, who played a pre-Christmas game under the new rules, said kicking the ball out beyond the new 40 metre arc raised the stakes considerably. He reported that short, clipped passes to the edge of the arc are trickier to pull off and come with increased risk.
He concluded that most 'keepers will simply go long to midfield with the majority of kick-outs, ultimately reducing their chances of retaining possession.
Those attending Saturday's Galway v Kildare challenge should note that the throw-in time has been brought forward from 7.30pm to 6pm.