Patience is a virtue – but it can also be a vice, and one that is used as an instrument of torture.
Changes had to be made to Gaelic football, which was slowly – and I use that adverb advisedly – grinding much of the joy out of the game.
Sure, there was the odd great match, full of action and entertainment. But the majority of games were a dull Irish version of the stereotype of Italian soccer: defensive, highly tactical, plodding with possession, only coming to any life when occasional opportunities opened up in the final third.
So the latest Football Review Committee had to happen, had to suggest alterations to the rules.
Tyrone veteran Mattie Donnelly is quite right to say that “everyone has to be patient in how it evolves and be pragmatic too that there may be changes here and there.”
Let’s start with the major positive - the punishments for dissent/ delaying the play/ not handing the ball back in the required manner.
Only the team captain, or a ‘nominated deputy’, is allowed to query decisions with the referee. If anyone else does so, a free kick is awarded to the opposition and the ball should be moved 50m up the pitch.
Even more significantly, any team official who displays misconduct – which can include verbal abuse – towards any match official can be punished by the award of a free at the centre of the 13m line, or a two-point attempt can be tried from the apex of the 40m arc.
A two-point free seems an excessive reward, but if it helps eradicate the curse (often literally) of mouthing and slabbering then that has to be applauded, as loudly as you like.
Delaying the play and not handing the ball back are similar offences, and again they are now punishable by the referee moving the ball 50m up the field.
With the option of a ‘solo and go’ too, these aspects certainly speed up play and introduce elements of uncertainty, even chaos, which are much-needed to liven up any team sport.
Otherwise, though, uncertainty is contributing to risk aversion rather than risk-taking.
The focus on trying to set up a ‘two-pointer’ appears often to be preventing players from taking decent shooting opportunities inside the 40m arc.
Two points is a tempting reward, of course, but the time taken to wait for one could perhaps be better used in picking off several traditional points, especially with the greater space caused by the ‘3 v 3′ rule.
Watching in person is different from viewing on screen, but observing Tyrone-Derry on the BBC iPlayer I turned it up to 1.5 times the speed, then twice as fast as reality – and only then did it look like players were running for much of the action.
Derry boss Paddy Tally also noticed that lack of pace in the game, commenting:
“My concern is that the game has become very laboured and slow in the attack.
“One idea of the new rules was to speed up the game, make it more attacking, more one-to-one contests, move the ball forward at pace, improve kick-passing – but, really, that’s not happening.
“The game is getting to the point where teams are getting to the halfway line and saying, ‘Right, let’s slow the game down, let’s wait until we bring another player up the field, the 12th man’. The tactic then is to control the ball and create a slow attack. That’s what happened time after time.”
Tally noticed that in challenge games and also in the opening round of the League: “I saw this an awful lot over the weekend. The game becomes very slow and the attack goes back and forth across the field for two or three minutes at a time.
“There are no one-to-one contests. It’s just waiting to see if there is an opportunity for a two-point shot, or some man gets a shot off around the edge.”
It’s extremely early days, of course. The new rules definitely bring more positives than negatives.
It’s also entirely possible that games will become faster as players build up fitness levels.
Allowing the attacking team to have a 12 v 11 advantage in the opposition half, when their goalkeeper crosses over the halfway line, should lead to more scores, in theory.
However, one unintended consequence could be that the defending side is so determined not to allow even more space to open up that they stand off from making challenges, while the team in possession is unwilling to take any great risk of losing the ball and exposing themselves to a dangerous counter-attack.
Hence hand-pass after hand-pass after hand-pass.
That’s nothing particularly new, of course.
Gaelic football may be moving in a more entertaining direction – but more slowly than we would like…
* IF the GAA had VAR, then Ballinderry would surely be All-Ireland Club Intermediate Football champions. Instead, Crossmolina were awarded a penalty which should never have been given as Stephen Duffy clearly charged into goalkeeper Ben McKinless, and that mistake was not overturned because the referee was unable to look at video evidence.
In normal circumstances Ballinderry would have reacted with fury, at the time and afterwards.
Instead, they took that bitter defeat in their stride, fully aware that their opponents had suffered far worse off the field. The Shamrocks have been led in exemplary fashion by their manager Jarlath Bell.
The fact that the spot-kick was converted by Conor Loftus only added to the surreal nature of the situation. The tragic death of his fiancée Roisin Cryan had led to the postponement of the final from its original date.
Crossmolina will obviously enjoy having the trophy – but they will also have eternal respect and gratitude for the support and sportsmanship displayed throughout by Ballinderry Shamrocks.
