WHEN Galway were chasing an equaliser in stoppage time of last year’s All-Ireland final, they kept the ball for two minutes and 46 seconds.
At the end of it, Dylan McHugh hit the outside of the post.
In last year’s final, they had 13 meaningful spells of possession in the first half.
On average, they kept the ball for one minute and 10 seconds at a time.
Twelve times in the game they kept possession for over a minute before using it or losing it.
They were good at it. On seven of those 12 occasions, they scored.
Galway’s football last year was mind-numbing.
If they’d been from Ulster, they’d have been kicked from pillar to post for the way they sucked the soul out of a game.
It was also brilliantly effective.
Therein lay your problem.
Jim Gavin’s brief with the FRC was the best amateur field game in the world.
Maybe we’ll get there. Maybe we won’t.
But the signs are promising.
In the last six minutes of Kerry’s win over Derry on Sunday, there were eight attacks.
Only once did either team retain the ball for more than 35 seconds.
There was one great episode of Derry trying to work the ball out of defence. Unable to go back to the ‘keeper, Kerry put the full squeeze on. Staff in the Altnagelvin were at the ready with blood pressure monitors for all.
It was bonkers. And it was brilliant.
Armagh’s semi-final with Kerry was widely regarded as the game of the year in 2024.
It flew up and down the field. Its 75 attacks lasted an average of 40 seconds each.
In the first half on Saturday night, Armagh almost halved that.
Their average attack lasted 23 seconds.
Coaches have had 15 years to evolve the game. They took it a certain direction that made sense in a way.
But now it needs incubation because its own environment was no longer providing the nutrients it needs to grow.
Managers, coaches and players all desperately want control.
After Sligo’s opening round defeat, Tony McEntee said it was “not acceptable” that his side’s kickout retention rate should be forced down from 70-80 per cent to 50 per cent because of the changes.
Yet we saw more high fielding in one afternoon in Celtic Park than you might in a whole summer. Anton Tohill, Conor Glass, Barry Dan O’Sullivan and the outstanding Diarmuid O’Connor all produced breath-taking climbs that roused the place.
In 76 games between 2019 and his retirement, Dublin hit Brian Fenton with just 59 kickouts. Significantly fewer than one per game.
Perhaps the best midfielder of all time was reduced to a spectator by umpteen kickouts poked to the corner-back, popped to the second man, back to the keeper and away we go at walking pace.
Supporters have for so long craved the type of chaos we’ve had in the last fortnight of football games.
When Armagh decided to go at Tyrone on Saturday evening, they did it ruthlessly.
The Red Hands, by contrast, played last year’s football.
They thought they could control the game against the wind, suck the life out of it, play slow ball, eat the clock.
It was great for the game to see that backfire. The risk of bringing Niall Morgan up against the elements was too great. They kept the ball for an average of 49 seconds but had no penetration, scoring just 0-3.
And when Armagh inevitably took it off them, they went straight for the black spot.
Their 1-14 in the first half will become a reference point for the extraordinary value of taking risks and being direct in a game where control seems, for now, impossible.
The coaching community is in a frenzy. They are at war with this new game because it threatens their ideal.
Are they better to keep searching for that control, or to go the other way altogether and embrace the madness?
Their first stopping point will be the solo-and-go.
It is having the biggest impact of all.
When Galway drew with Roscommon 0-9 apiece in the league last year, the conditions were similar to the Athletic Grounds on Saturday evening.
Over 70 drab minutes, there were TWENTY-ONE different delays and stoppages at free kicks, many of them lasting between a minute and two minutes.
The solo-and-go combined with the hooter system and the fear of a 50m penalty for delaying a free being taken has, for now, taken coaches’ fingers off the killswitch.
Expect that over the next few weeks, players might be discouraged from using the solo-and-go, especially in the attacking half, as teams seek ways to settle things down. Slow it down, bring the ‘keeper up, create the 12v11, eat the clock a bit.
We don’t know much yet.
But what you must remember is that most of the flaws you think you’ve discovered have already been talked through at length.
For instance, a chorus is growing that it’s unfair to award two points for kicking a free from outside the 40m arc.
But if you change it so that two-pointers only count from open play, there is only one road that is headed: teams will foul, repeatedly, because fouling is rewarded.
The two-point arc is causing consternation. Too easy with a breeze.
But if the two-point arc doesn’t exist, teams would retreat straight back into a zonal shell and only defend the 35m in front of goal.
Tyrone held on tight to 2024 on Saturday night, sat right in. Armagh had done that in Salthill. They absorbed the harsh lesson and taught it to their neighbours.
The end-game is that defences will realise they can’t allow those shots to be uncontested. They will become more aggressive and press further out. That, in turn, will lead to two things: more turnovers, and more goal chances.
Perfection does not exist.
It is, however, highly unlikely with the new rules that any team will ever keep the ball for three minutes again.
Coaches will wrestle back some control once they work it out. The game will settle a bit. Then the provincial championships will start, there will be a few almighty hammerings that will be only marginally bigger than the hammerings we already had but will dominate the headlines, because that’s what happens.
Look at the last two weeks for what they are.
Bits and pieces will change. Let the last score stand even though Ethan Rafferty touched it. There’d rightly be war if that was a one-point championship game. Award the two-pointer if it’s clearly the goalkeeper gets hands on a shot from beyond the 45. Loosen the handing the ball back on a free, but keep a tight rein on delaying them.
The 50m penalty has scared the bejaysus out of everyone. Referees, prayed for at every mass for the last three months, have never had things easier.
Imagine Joe McQuillan getting through Armagh-Tyrone without having to deal with a mouthful from anyone.
There could be no more definitive sign that things are working than the generally gloominess of coaches, desperate for things to complain about but struggling to find them.
This will work.
To paraphrase a certain former Dublin manager, we just have to trust the process.