Theyâd agree theyâre glad they lost and didnât make the all Ireland final?
TNH
100% they said it was brutal to watch. Of course they would have been delirah if they got to the final. Wouldnât doubt that.
Roryball is built on the fear of losing. You have to take some chances at some point.
Similar enough to Davy Fitzgeraldâs mantra.
Aye, and the actual lads who go to the matches hated that shite as well.
1 Like
Did you hear Cyril on Dalos podcast during the week? Continually referring to Hawkeye as âthe hawk eyeâ 
4 Likes
Anyone post up the article please
Joe is a great great man
1 Like
a little harsh on the GGA?
3 Likes
Must be close to Saturation point for GAA podcasts.
There still isnât a good hurling analysis one
Chedd will save us
Ursula knows her hurling apparently. She should do one
Nasty post
Congrats Joe
My four new rules to save Gaelic football
Zonal defending, passing to the âkeeper and use of the sweeper are killing the game, but all is not lost â yet
David Clifford of Kerry calls for a mark after winning the ball ahead of John Daly of Galway during the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Final match between Kerry and Galway at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Stephen McCarthy
August 21 2022 02:30 AM
I am still recovering from the sing song at Knockmore GAA club. Michael English on the piano makes everyone sound good, even the glamorous brunette.
She is the only woman I know who can sing in three different keys simultaneously. If the club was bouncing to her âCourtin in the Kitchenâ it went to a whole new level when Anthony Finnerty took the mic.
Every Mayo footballer has a sad story. Earlier in the evening, I had introduced Pat Holmes to my sons. He told them about the 1996 All-Ireland final. Pat was wing-back.
Mayo were beating Meath by a point with time up. Colm Coyle miskicked a shot, it bounced and somehow went over the bar. Meath won the replay by a point.
In the second half of the 1989 final against Cork, Finnerty, aka Laughing Larry, scored a goal to put Mayo a point up, and in pole position to win the game against a nervy Cork team who had lost the previous two finals.
Five minutes later, Noel Durcan put a great pass through to Finnerty leaving him one on one with the âkeeper to win the game. Alas, this time he drove it wide.
If Mayo football is a symphony of sorrowful songs, Laughing Larry isnât. He started with âLittle Ole Wine Drinker, Meâ, ending on his hands and knees, weeping. The place erupted.
He followed up with âBig Bad Johnâ, the single funniest two minutes I have had in my life. When he stood on the piano and held up the roof of the clubhouse before sagging to the ground and dying on the floor, I thought Bernie Flynn and Pat Gilroy would need an ambulance.
Spending a night in the company of TomĂĄs Ă SĂŠ, Flynn, thereâs only one Kieran McKeever, Gilroy, Noel Connelly, Holmes, Enda Gormley and all the rest, it was hard not to think of how unentertaining the game has become.
The day before this yearâs All-Ireland final, I addressed the world GAA delegates at Abbotstown in Dublin.
The UachtarĂĄn, Larry McCarthy, was there, and afterwards, the Q&A was dominated by how unattractive the game has become as a spectacle â delegate after delegate wondering aloud how it has gone so bad and what could be done to restore it.
The core problem is that the GAA has missed the point. They appointed a rules review body which spent three years looking the wrong way.
They came up with the mark to encourage high catching and long kicking, but it does neither. And when an outfield player takes possession of the kick-out, he can no longer pass it directly back to the âkeeper, but now has to pass it to his mate first who can then pass it back to the âkeeper. Three years.
The GAA have allowed a vacuum to develop. Coaches have filled it, from Jimmy McGuinness onwards. The game is now run by coaches, for coaches. Not for players, spectators or the young coming through. For coaches.
Killing the game. Short kick-outs, then playing donkey with the opposing forwards. Packing the defence. Playing a sweeper to kill attacking play.
Taking zero risk. Using the goalkeeper as an outfield player to try to overcome the sweeper problem by creating an overlap. So the ball is thrown in, and we chat among ourselves until something happens.
The point, entirely overlooked by the GAA, is that the game is first and foremost about entertainment. Put another way, it is a game. For the players, the spectators, the wider audience. To promote entertainment, the rules need to promote contests.
Kerryâs David Clifford and Galwayâs Shane Walsh shake hands before this yearâs All-Ireland SFC final. Photo: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
Basketball was stuck in a rut of defensive play, killing the game, holding possession and general boredom until the NBA revolutionised it by taking it away from the coaches and enforcing rules that made risk taking and contests compulsory. We must do the same.
I believe that four basic rule changes will achieve this:
1
The goalkeeper cannot take a pass from an outfield player. Infringement: penalty kick. This will reward teams for pressing up on the defence and tackling them hard. As it is, as soon as the ball has been safely kicked out short, the defending team can hold possession all day long if they want, using the âkeeper to play donkey.
In the epic 2017 All-Ireland final, Dublin were a point up against Mayo. They had a sideline on their attacking 14-yard line with a few minutes on the clock. Bernard Brogan took it. The Dubs deliberately worked the ball back to Stephen Cluxton and kept the ball until the final whistle. Without being able to involve the goalie, Dublin would have had to go for another score. As it was, they could kill the game.
Not with these rule proposals. If that final was played according to my four rule changes, Dublin would have had to attack from that sideline. They would have had to go for a score. There would have been no option to kill the game. They could not go back over the half-way line and could not pass the ball to Cluxton.
Mayo would have been man for man on them, frantically trying to prevent the insurance point, and trying to turn them over. They would have had every chance of doing so, since the Dubs only had one half of the field to operate in, essentially forcing them to attack for the point. Such vast excitement that would have been. As it was, the rules allowed the Dubs to play keep ball for nearly three minutes to the final whistle.
2
At adult level, the kick-out must be kicked from the 13-metre line and must go beyond the 45. Infringement: 20-metre free kick.
This will enforce contests. Coaches will weep. Let them. We have wept as they have ruined the game. The kick-out beyond the 45 will mean contests. High fielding, breaking ball all over the place, mayhem, excitement. Simple to enforce. Exciting and unpredictable. Kick it long and take your chances.
3
Once the ball has gone over the half-way line, it cannot be played back over it. Infringement: 20-metre free kick.
No more working the ball back to the defence and playing keep ball, frustrating the opposition and the spectators. This, as in basketball, will force teams to go forward. It will force them to push up onto the attack.
It will encourage quick movement of the ball to the inside forwards. Not this endless slow build up, back and back.
Also, with the âkeeper no longer allowed to take a pass from an outfield player, the opposing team will have pushed up man to man so dilly-dallying will no longer be rewarded. Attack or be damned.
4
No sweeper. Zonal defending is prohibited inside a 40-metre exclusion zone. Infringement: 20-metre free kick.
Sweeping/zonal defending is the biggest blight on the game. At least one sweeper is now the norm. No one doesnât do it.
Not Kerry, not Dublin, not anyone. It forces âpatientâ (boring), âlateralâ (boring) âpossession-basedâ (boring) football that regularly brings the game to a virtual standstill.
The exclusion zone man-marking rule requires a little more work but is straightforward.
At inter-county and club championship level, we already have three referees. Instead of two trained referees deciding whether the ball has gone over the sideline, we replace them with two sideline umpires to decide.
The second and third referee will take one half of the field each (we should have done this long ago anyway, to cut out the off-the-ball stuff).
There will be an exclusion zone. This is a semi-circle extending from the end line, the tip being 40 metres out. Inside this exclusion zone, only man marking is allowed, until the ball enters it.
As soon as the extra referees or referee see a zonal marker, they will blow the whistle and a 20-metre free in front of the goals will be awarded. The exclusion zone means that the attacking team has the whip hand.
A defender can only be inside that zone if he is man marking, as in if his man goes in. The referees will judge man marking on, say, a three metre distance, but we all know what man marking is.
This means that if David Clifford goes to the edge of the square he can only be marked by one opponent. There can be no sweeper in front killing the early ball or double marking him.
Once the ball is inside the exclusion zone, then everyone can go in. So, letâs say it is kicked long to Darren McCurry on the 13-metre line, as soon as it goes inside the exclusion zone, the midfielders etc can drop back.
David Clifford
We experimented with this at minor level in my own club and it looked great. It rewards good attacking play.
It gets rid of the sweepers who have wrecked the game, slowing it up dreadfully and causing endless boredom.
In tandem, these rules will enforce positive football. Holding possession and slowly moving forward will no longer be rewarded by the rules. Instead, quick, risk taking, positive football will be enforced.
As it is, if a goal is scored there is a stewardsâ inquiry. How did he get in there? What happened our sweeper? What happened our defensive shell? TV analysts showing us X had taken up the wrong position in the blanket.
These rules will encourage a return to real football, where defenders defend, attackers attack and we have no time to chat among ourselves.
I hear it said that the spectacle is improving a bit, but it is not. We are merely getting used to what is on offer. Worse, for a younger generation, these terrible habits have become the norm.
David Clifford of Kerry calls for a mark after winning the ball ahead of John Daly of Galway during the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Final match between Kerry and Galway at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Stephen McCarthy
Kilcoo, with their fearsome, excitement-killing defensive system, are the All-Ireland club champions. Derry, with a full-on blanket defence, are Ulster champions. Galway got their first score against us in the 23rd minute of the All-Ireland semi-final.
By then, we could and should have been about seven points ahead and the game would have been dead. We would have held possession for most of the second half.
A win then would have given us the confidence to go out and swamp and smother Kerry.
We would probably have lost (because of Clifford, although he would at least have been double marked), but the final would have stunk and the spectacle awful, taking us back to the 2011 semi-final and 2014 final.
Donât forget that in the final itself, not a single goal chance was created. The very dangerous Damien Comer, because the Kerry sweeper policed the area in front of him, didnât even get a score. The rules still allow this. Why?
The four rules I propose, taken together, will free the game. They will enforce contests. Keep ball will be impossible.
It will encourage man-to-man marking as the team not in possession will be able to push up on the opposing team without being subjected to donkey.
If a corner-back is caught in possession, he cannot use the âkeeper to get out of trouble, so the crowd will be on its feet.
It will encourage defenders to kick longer and get the ball out of the danger zone, as they can no longer endlessly hand-pass the ball around using the âkeeper.
From kick-outs, thatâs 30 to 40 times a game, the play will now start between the 45s. This means unpredictability and excitement.
High catching will once again be vital. The fact the ball cannot be passed back over the half-way line means the team in possession must attack. They will have no choice. This will create risk taking.
If a team has dangerous inside forwards, they can only be man marked until the ball is inside the exclusion zone. All of this will encourage direct attacking play.
The single biggest killer of the spectacle has been the sweeper. This will get rid of that.
Together, these rules will release the game and restore it to the spectacle we know it can be. In this yearâs final, only Shane Walsh and David Clifford were able to express themselves against the zonal defensive systems.
Everyone else got nowhere. You should not have to be a once-in-a-generation superstar to get scores in our game.
At the World GAA forum, I carefully went through these proposals then took a lengthy Q&A. At the end of my remarks, I publicly asked the UachtarĂĄn to set up a rules committee and appoint me as chair. No one was laughing.
3 and especially 4 are pure sunlit uplands stuff.
Word counts to fill are a hewer.
1 Like
