THE CAST STONE: New rules and knee jerks

I’VE been immersed in the GAA since the moment I drew breath. Many of the people who play Gaelic football have been central to my existence, and I’m fortunate to work in an industry which combines my love of the game and the ability to earn a living. Of course, like any other job, my role as Mayo News Sport Editor has challenges, but watching sport and particularly Gaelic football is a joy.

As it’s part of my daily life, the intricacies and nuances of the game are never far from my thoughts, and that’s the way I like it. Over the years, the game has excited and enthralled me. The vast majority of the people involved in it have enhanced my life, and our little clan are involved in the sport in Mayo, Leitrim, Vancouver and Vienna.

Therefore, the proposed new rules put forward by the Football Review Committee have occupied a lot of our thinking-time.

It has been obvious for some time that the sport needed a serious overhaul. It had become boring, predictable and somewhat sterile. Much of the passion and sense of possibility was no longer present at inter-county level, and even I, the biggest dreamer of them all, found last season an absolute borefest. 

The games Mayo were involved in rarely got the juices flowing. I enjoyed the occasions in Omagh and Tralee when we played the home sides in the league, but in hindsight, that sense of enjoyment more to do with the Saturday night spent in those fine towns when not a lot else was happening in the domestic sporting world. The football rarely, if ever, quickened the heartbeat. It was easy to understand why attendances were falling and interest was waning.

Then, the new president of the GAA, Jarlath Burns, got on the road and set up the aforementioned Football Review Committee. He got some of the finest minds in the sport involved, and I was delighted to see our own James Horan, former Dublin manager Jim Gavin, Éamonn Fitzmaurice from Kerry, Clare’s Colm Collins, Donegal’s Michael Murphy and current Tyrone boss Malacy O’Rourke alongside other eminent figures in the sport.

The committee’s key focus was to ‘Provide the best possible game experience for players and spectators’. They were asked to create a template to help make football one of the ‘most enjoyable amateur games in the world to play and watch’, alongside hurling, women’s football and camogie. 

Midway through the process I was at a presentation by James Horan on the committee’s progress, and it was obvious that a huge volume of work was being undertaken.

Fast-forward to the recent Inter-Pro series of games in Croke Park, when the proposed new rules were unveiled. It was hugely interesting to see the ‘new game’ played out in front of our eyes, and it certainly was a departure from the football I had become accustomed to watching in recent years. I liked it and enjoyed it – some people disagreed with me, but that’s to be expected.

The most disappointing thing to witness in the aftermath of the ‘experimental’ games was the knee-jerk reaction from all sides. Some lauded the new rules, others responded to them with disdain. Most people had their minds made up before the players had showered at the end of the game, which was so sad and very annoying.

Surely, the proposed new rules shouldn’t be judged on three games played in a festival-type atmosphere at the end of the season. Surely, time should be given for everyone to breathe and smell the roses before decisions are made on proposed new rules that will change the sport for a generation if and when they’re introduced.

However, knee-jerk reactions are the usual response to any proposed changes, and it’s no different on this occasion, which is a pity. Time is needed to digest and understand the possible positives and negatives of the new rules, but straight away there were calls to disregard some of the new proposals.

Why can’t all the rules be trialled in pre-season competitions and the National League? Of course, that would be too simple and too many people have opinions to allow the time and space for that to happen. The more things change, the more they remain the same!