AT the entrance to Alabama’s famous White Oak Plantation hunting lodge, there’s a sign that reads ‘Bo knows turkeys’.
Bo is Bo Pitman, a legendary turkey hunter who schooled himself to become an expert in the animal’s behaviours.
What Bo discovered is that they are creatures that do not like to have their habits disturbed.
They like things to be the way they are.
A wild turkey’s day will follow the same basic routine.
Fly down. Feed. Call. Breed. Preen. Loaf. Fly back up to roost.
Christmas is not the only thing they do not appreciate.
Anything that threatens their day-to-day routine is to be treated with disdain.
What Bo knows about turkeys, the GAA’s Football Review Committee knows about footballers.
Take the words of Michael Murphy.
He was once a turkey himself but has taken on a new role as turkey hunter.
What he said over the weekend could not have illustrated more perfectly how the inside of a changing room views anything that threatens their daily routine.
“When I was a player, playing myself, the different rules that were brought in, the structures that were brought in – I remember thinking ‘no, no, no, no, no’, no to everything.
“You’re so in a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday regimen, you’re trying to control your next session, you’re trying to control your next week’s training. The only way you can control it is knowing what the boundaries and the rules are. So probably, we were always the worst person to potentially ask.
“But I think it’s come to a crux where [many] do feel that there’s a change needed, just for the enjoyable aspect of watching the game.”
Michael knows turkeys.
Jim Gavin also knows turkeys.
Eamonn Fitzmaurice, Malachy O’Rourke, James Horan, Colm Collins, they all know turkeys.
The only people who dislike change more than Gaelic footballers are Gaelic football managers.
Think about it rationally.
Most of them have gotten where they are in the sport by finding ways to manipulate the rules to best suit them.
Tactical innovation is essentially finding a new way to batter the lining out of the spirit of a rule without giving away a free.
Change is a threat. It means all their hard work, spending years coaching their players how to manipulate the game in their favour, could be laid to waste.
Some might have to start over altogether if the new rules the FRC are proposing do become permanent law.
Any gameplan built around keeping possession by repeatedly using your goalkeeper is in grave danger.
A team that favours a slower, more methodical transition up the pitch could find their ways outdated very quickly.
So much of an inter-county team’s time is spent on tactical plays and walkthroughs of ideas.
These rules could strip a lot of it back and begin to refocus coaches on the basic technical aspects of the game.
If kicking is rewarded, then the teams with the best kickers will thrive.
If a faster transition is shown to be profitable, then a good ball-winning forward as the out-ball could come back into fashion.
But everyone is scared of that because that’s not what has been coached for many years.
So you can see why the turkeys might line up in the next six weeks to shoot their neck at these suggestions.
We cannot listen.
We must not listen.
Footballers will never, ever, ever support change.
Managers, even less so.
You will find red herrings in your morning headlines.
The poor referee, who absolutely nobody ever cares about, will suddenly become the most important consideration.
‘How’s the man supposed to know if the ball was kicked from just outside the arc? What if the shot is from right on the line, is that one point or two? Refs have a hard enough job.’
This column recalls the same doomsday talk around the kickout mark.
‘What if he catches the ball with his two biggest toes inside his own 45′, the mark can’t be given, he’ll be turned over, Kerry will score 1-8 on the bounce and the world will end’ kinda stuff.
Already the coaching community has been scheming for ways around the ban on a backpass to the goalkeeper.
Could we give the goalkeeper the number 14 jersey and put the full-forward in nets?
In time, there may be a workaround discovered.
What you might find with the two-point arc is that a plethora of wee Jonny Sextons get introduced, sitting back in the pocket right on the edge of the arc, waiting for the drop at goal.
There will be new innovations.
But the good thing about the way the new rules have been laid out is that as many bases as possible seem to have been covered.
Some ideas from previous FRC iterations have been half-baked, too easy to manipulate.
Nothing will ever be watertight but these seem pretty close.
So much of what has happened to Gaelic football is negative innovation.
Jim McGuinness’s famous 2011 gameplan was dastardly and horrible and destructive but it was also ingenious and inventive and incredibly different.
Since then, every new manager on the circuit has opened their starter park to find nothing but a blanket defence.
It’s good coaching that found ways through it, the running and cutting at angles, the handpassing games that opens it up. One facilitated the other because to keep kicking the ball into that was madness.
But then they kept going until the idea settled that here’s this fella standing in the goalmouth doing nothing, why don’t we utilise him a bit better.
And it was at that point that football really fell off a cliff.
The club games we’ve seen in the last month have been unwatchable at times.
It is a sport desperately in need of saving from itself.
These new rules will go a long way towards that.
It’s exciting to see what Friday night will bring in Croke Park.
The provinces were allowed one in-house game each on Saturday afternoon to prepare.
What we’ll see is the ideas in their purest form.
By this time next year, it will have settled into a new pattern, a less crazy, more competitive shape.
But when it does, hopefully what we find is that there is no longer the same reward for negativity and cynicism.
And remember: no matter what the turkeys say, you must not listen.
You must think: This turkey hates Christmas.
Think of Bo, and think of Michael.
Michael knows turkeys.