As expected, the Football Review Committee’s adjustment to the rules, introduced in last week’s league round six, has resulted in a decline in goalkeepers getting involved in play farther up the field.
The latest report of the GAA’s Games Intelligence Unit indicates the impact of the updated provision on goalkeepers joining play. Changing the original 3v3 structure to 4v3 – meaning that a goalkeeper in attack must be replaced in his half by a team-mate – was intended to prevent the 12v11 imbalance when he was previously free to roam and leave three defenders in his own half.
Judged on the GIU’s findings, it has succeeded in restricting the movement of ‘keepers although it was noticeable that those most proficient at playing in advanced positions, such as Tyrone’s Niall Morgan and Monaghan’s Rory Beggan, continued to do so.
The overall data however shows that passes to the goalkeeper fell from a competition-high average of 25.7 in round five – and an average over the first four rounds of 19.9 – to just 1.4 in round six.
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This indicates that goalkeepers mostly opted against joining play in the opposition’s half.
One finding that will puzzle the FRC is that despite the abolition of the 12v11 overload, there has not so far been any appreciable impact on the amount of handpassing, which had been expected to fall after the introduction of the rule tweaks and the consequent unavailability of the goalkeeper to act as a spare man in attack.
Instead, the key metric of handpass to kick-pass ratio has risen to 4:1 from the opening five rounds’ average of 3.4:1 – a jump of 18 per cent. Obviously, further data will be needed before panicking but it had been hoped that the FRC changes would help to adjust football from an excess of “horizontal” movement to a more “vertical” game.
If effective, this would reduce the reliance on handpassing. The GIU findings indicate that the overall handpass count has hardly changed, dropping slightly from an average of 395 to 394, the kickpassing count has declined steeply, from a total count of 118 to 99 and in open play, from 89 to 72 – or by 16 and 19 per cent, respectively.
This more or less mirrors the rise in the handpass to kickpass ratio. The decline in kickpassing last week may be a statistical outlier but there will be concerned monitoring, as the season progresses to see if that ratio can be brought lower.
