Pat Spillane: Special Congress missed a trick as they ignored the elephant in the room

Christ, many thought I was losing my marbles. That for the first time ever they had read one of my articles where there was no hint of cynicism or criticism.

It got me thinking. And you know, they were probably right.

Maybe in my enthusiasm for something to be done about the horrible game of Gaelic football people were being forced to both watch and play, I didn’t cast my critical eye over this enough.

Perhaps there is a need for some constructive criticism. Maybe, just maybe, this might not prove to be the silver bullet that GAA supporters were hoping for.

Maybe Jim Gavin is not the messiah many people believe him to be. Maybe he is fallible after all – what sacrilege, perish the thought. Maybe there could be a few bumps on the road ahead.

OK, now for my criticism of the changes, constructive of course, a week later but in plenty of time to balance things out.

There are seven main rule changes and a multitude of minor reforms.

To begin with, there are too many changes all at once. I think that is a very valid point to make. It will certainly mean that spectators, players and managers are going to be watching and playing an entirely different game, indeed an entirely different sport.

Secondly, the role of the referees. How will they be able to manage with all the extra rules and regulations that are being heaped on an already heavy workload?

A very difficult task, I think.

Take last week’s Ulster club final as an example. A simple rule is that a player can’t be in the square before the ball has arrived, yet Noel Mooney and his officials failed to spot Joe Oguz in there too early and he scored a goal that should have been disallowed.

Now the referee will have the 3v3, the 40m arc and various other things to police – with all these added rules. Heaven help him.

And as for the poor club referee heading to a Division 4 league game on his own, with no officials to help him, it is going to be mission impossible.

What they will probably do is take an a la carte approach. Implement a few and ignore another few.

Black cards in club football are as rare as hen’s teeth. They don’t bother with it.

I saw an interesting stat from Longford. There are 1,100 club games to be played in Longford next year. They have 28 referees and three of them are over 70.

With referees running an extra two kilometers and the game speeding up, God help us in terms of the problems that lay ahead.

I then started to wonder if the FRC had made an obvious omission. An area that should have been addressed but wasn’t.

Well, here is my tuppence worth. The swarm tackling and tactical fouling which was so rampant in the two club finals last weekend will still go unpunished.

Referees will still take the handy cop out when a player is being belted in possession and surrounded by other players before he is blown for over-carrying.

That whole grey area around tackling, what is and what is not allowed, has not been addressed.

And of course that brings me to the elephant in the room, the over-use of one skill that has taken the joy out of football.

Yes, you’ve guessed it, hand-passing, or, should that read the over use of hand-passing.

In 2011, the All-Ireland senior football championship averaged 250 hand-passes per game; this year it had risen to 450. And, sadly, the FRC has chosen not to amend the hand-passing rule.

When teams are trying to close out a game, my fear is that we will still be subject to more of the same – boring keep-ball, retention, retention and more retention.

I hope I am wrong.

The only new rule they dropped which I thought was a wrong move was the four points for a goal. Because four for a goal encouraged risk taking, that is what we want in the game, that is what was lacking.

The four interprovincial games produced 15 goals between them. People took a risk and went for a goal.

But maybe Gavin, with his background in the defence forces, obeyed the classic military strategy where a tactical defeat can be considered a strategic victory because it achieved other goals.

I think dropping four points for a goal was a sop to the critics and it bought them off. It allowed them an easy passage for the rest.

Probably my biggest criticism of the new rules, and it’s not about the specific rule changes per se, is the fact they have not been road-tested in a competitive environment.

You can have all the sandbox games in the world, and all the inter-provincial games, which, while they were enjoyable, were still challenge matches.

We won’t know how the new rules work until they are tried in a competitive environment.

There were two missed opportunities on that score.

First off, the Higher Education authorities should have played the Sigerson Cup under the new rules. It would have showcased what is a brilliant competition.

And more importantly, the Sigerson players, who are mostly inter-county players, would get accustomed to the new rules and the new game that they will be playing for the rest of the year.

Now, for the next couple of months, these Sigerson lads will be training and playing Sigerson matches, and then training and playing challenge matches with their counties, under two sets of rules, which is crazy.

And finally, that brings me to the stupidity of the GAA in its decision to scrap the pre-season competitions where they could have trialled the new rules.

Instead, the first chance to try these rules in a competitive game will be in the league. That’s wrong, because the league now has a major bearing on championship placings.

Bad enough that the Sigerson lads will be flogged playing two different types of sport, the inter-county lads, in order to compensate for the loss of other pre-season competition, will be traversing the country mid-week and weekends to play challenge games under the new rules.

Player welfare? You must be joking. Just think of the crowds that would flock to those pre-season matches to see the new rules in action.

Think of the money.

John Prenty said they stand to lose €150,000 from having no pre-season games in Connacht. They could double that this year if they were left on and that money could be used for coaching.

And finally, those pre-season competitions offered a rare chance for the Division 3 and 4 counties to be playing the Kerrys and Dublins of this world.

Do you think a Division 3 or 4 county will be getting a challenge from those counties in the next few months? Not a chance.

Hopefully today’s article provides a bit of balance and highlights that there may indeed be a few bumps on the road to the Promised Land for Gaelic football. I hope I am wrong.

Watching so many club finals on both Clubber and TG4 last weekend brought home to me the reality of how ugly the game of Gaelic football had become.

And how badly we need some new rules.

Yes, there were a few highlights. Kilmurry, the 49th-ranked team in Cork, beat Firies, the 25th-ranked team in Kerry, in the Munster junior final and they played some cracking football.

Peter Óg McCartan’s long- range point to win the Ulster final will hopefully be a sign of things to come when we have the new rules.

But the overriding impression left by the two big club games – the Ulster and Munster finals – was just stale, boring, safety-first football where the fear of losing superseded the desire to win.

Everything that’s wrong with Gaelic football was there to see in those two clashes last weekend.

Even Dr Crokes, a noted attacking team, fell into the same trap in the first half and played the same sort of shite.

Do you need evidence? I will give it to you. Take the Munster final – 26 frees in the first half, with most of them down to tactical fouling.

Dr Crokes had 70 per cent possession in the first half and got off the grand total of six shots at goal, scoring four points.

Loughmore-Castleiney, an amazing dual club, came to Mallow with one purpose – to look for a moral victory by losing by as little as possible. They had no attacking plan, they were never going to win the game.

Here are some of their stats. They had one shot at goal from play in the first half, scoring one point. They had 10 shots at goal in the entire match, that is one every six-plus minutes, from open play. And you wonder why they lost.

The Ulster final wasn’t a whole pile better. The first forward had a shot at goal from play for Kilcoo after eight minutes, and it took nine minutes for the first Errigal Ciarán player to have a shot at goal.

The first Errigal forward to score from play took 30 minutes. It took 48 minutes for the first Kilcoo forward to score from play.

Both sets of forwards got the grand total of two points from play for their team. Kilcoo had 21 shots at goal from play, Errigal had 17 shots.

Suffice to say none of those games will be on my highlights reel at the end of the year.

Forgettable stuff. Those rules can’t come fast enough!