The Football Review Committee will shortly make final recommendations for the rules to be applied in this year’s championship. The report on the first three rounds of the National Football League by the GAA’s Games Intelligence Unit provides some parameters for that discussion.
The obvious findings are the preponderance of long kick-outs and the increase in contested kick-outs but there was some disappointment that the handpass to kick pass ratio had hardly budged from the 2023 and ’24 figures of 3.2:1 and 3.4:1 during the opening weeks of the season.
Paul Earley, one of the GAA’s most qualified coaches and a veteran of Eugene McGee’s FRC in 2012, has predictably been taking a keen interest in how the game is evolving and believes there are a number of changes that could be made before the summer rules are finalised.
One is the role of the goalkeeper. This has attracted much comment because of the fact that the roaming ‘keeper is allowed to create an imbalance by joining the attack, causing a 12-11 overload.
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This has effectively shifted the potential for endless handpassing from defence to attack, as the “extra man” goalkeeper becomes an outlet for holding possession.
“I think one of the objectives of the FRC is that they wanted a more ‘vertical’ game,” says Earley, “as opposed to a ‘horizontal’ game, which we were used to in recent years”.
“If that is a stated aim or stated goal, then having the goalkeeper come up and get involved in the game past the halfway line, doesn’t facilitate that. In fact, it facilitates the more horizontal game.
“I’ve heard a couple of people and maybe a couple of coaches as well say, ‘look, the game is so fast now that we need periods of slow play to kind of balance it’, but the referee has a role that there are various stoppages in the game anyway – you know, players can take a breather if there are injuries or if the clock is stopping for subs and whatnot.”
Another factor in the decline of kick passing is the new “solo and go” provision, allowing players to take off on being awarded a free with a buffer zone of four metres. That doesn’t count as a kick.
Earley says precise comparisons can’t be made between the current league and the 2023 and ’24 figures– which is based on championship fixtures – because the data that stripped out frees from kick passes wasn’t gathered in the previous years.
“I noticed in the statistical evidence they had the kick pass ‘including frees’ ratio, which was the same. They had the kick pass in open play ratio but they didn’t have data for that from the last couple of years compared it against. That would have been the interesting one.”
Earley is in agreement with the complaints of some managers on two issues, red-card and black-card punishments and the number of replacements that teams should be allowed to make.
Teams losing a player for disciplinary reasons are allowed to “borrow” someone from their 3v3 structure, which effectively allows them to mitigate their penalty.
“That’s maybe one of the unintended consequences,” he says. “I’m sure they’ve looked at all of that but when you look at it, it doesn’t really punish the offending team.
“It should give an advantage obviously to the opposition when they’re a man up or two men up. The bulk of the game has been played between the two 45-metre lines so having a numerical advantage there would be significant. So, if you lose a player, you just have to keep your 3v3 up, which means you’re down a player in the central area.”
He would also allow more than the permitted five replacements but restrict the opportunity to bring them on to the field.
“I would go with six or seven subs and have maybe three occasions in each half when they can come on, other than for injuries.”
He would also consult regularly with referees because of the increased physical demands on them, which creates mental fatigue affecting decision-making, particularly at the end of matches, and he favours video assistance in top intercounty matches.
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“Soccer has it; rugby has it. It’s not a big extension to move it to championship football and the GAA.”
Whereas he acknowledges the positive impact on long-range shooting of the two-point score for kicks beyond 40 metres, Earley doesn’t believe frees should come into that category.
“I would only give the two points from open play. Now the question is, does that encourage fouling outside? I’m not sure if it would because you foul outside, then you give a foul away, then with the solo and goal you’re almost giving the guy a free run inside. So, I think two pointers should only be for open play.”
