Rule Change Needed to Stop Puke Keep-Ball

[Hound]

I havent read any of this thread but 100% fair dues to dublin and i dont say that easily......dublin or any other team who puts themselves in a position to be able run the clock down like this then why not. Yes it looks awful but how many donegal players were in their own half when all this is going on? When youve a decent lead and have the opportunity to play a low risk tactic to see it out then why not? Play the ball around, force the opposition to push out and up on you, create space in the oppositions half and get over laps and attack cleverly. Yeah it looks terrible but the opposition as much as anyone contribute to it

You'll never hear me disagree with any of that.

But doesn't mean I want to watch it. And if me, a "proper" GAA man is being turned away, then those who are less inclined towards the game have already bolted.

It's in everyone's interests for the rules to be adapted to minimise the opportunity for the anti-spectacle that is ball-keeping.

Donwe have to wait for four-figure championship crowds before everyone agrees? Or can we move forward on it now?

It's bizarre that you think ball keeping is easy! And that you want to punish the team that keep the ball rather than the team who refuse to try and get it back.

How do you think Donegal would have got on had they been 4 points up and tried to play keep-ball for the last 10 minutes?

Dublin would have been committing everything to regaining possession. Yes, that would have left them open to a counter attack, but that's football! What they wouldn't have done is left 12 men back and hope that Donegal are really stupid and would kick it into a forward who's double marked.

[weareros]

What I would do is give one team in all situations home advantage, even if just toss of coin. I was there at Portlaoise and between 4 counties you had a 27k capacity stadium half full for important games. Croke Park last Saturday was soulless. At least with one team having home advantage it should help ensure an atmosphere. It seems only the die hards will travel long distance to neutral venues.

[NAG1]

I think football is in a very bad place at the moment.

People are confusing a lack of competitiveness (and is Gaelic football any worse in that regard than it has ever been?) with the health of the sport and how it is being played.

Gaelic football now is being played to a higher standard than ever before. That is unarguable. The skills are better, the fitness is better, competitive games are generally more exciting than they have ever been. This doesn't fit the populist narrative, but it's a fact.

The great games of this decade are the greatest games of all-time.

Dublin v Kerry 2013 and 2016.
Dublin v Mayo 2015 and 2017.
Mayo v Kerry 2014 x 2 and 2017 x 2.
Dublin v Donegal 2014.

Look into what's happening in the 2018 championship. There have been brilliant games all over the place.

Tyrone v Monaghan - brilliant.
Donegal played superb football in their four games in Ulster. They played plenty of it again against Dublin.

Even in Leinster, there were some cracking games - Laois v Wexford, Offaly v Wicklow, wins fro Carlow over Kildare and Longford over Meath.

The qualifiers have been full to the brim with classics.
Meath v Tyrone
Derry v Kildare
Tipperary v Mayo
Kildare v Mayo
Offaly v Clare
Wexford v Waterford
Armagh v Clare
Roscommon v Armagh

There were other very solid, competitive games:
Cavan v Down
Longford v Kildare
Monaghan v Laois
Cavan v Tyrone
Sligo v Armagh
Offaly v Antrim

High scores are being racked up all over the place.

Galway v Kerry on Sunday was derided. Yet that game finished 1-13 to 1-10. That used to be considered reasonably high scoring, you know. Meath v Dublin 1997, for instance was regarded at the time as a brilliant, thrilling game. Yet it finished with the exact same scoreline, 1-13 to 1-10.

There is no problem with the sport as it is played or with the rules.

People's problems are with bad coaches and bad tactics, and they will always exist and have always existed.

There's an incredible hysteria throughout Gaelic football pundits and followers of looking at the past through rose tinted glasses here.

The standard of Gaelic football 25 years ago, or even 15 years ago, was, compared to now, shit.

It's really not, on both counts.
The period from the mid-nineties to the mid-noughties was the pinnacle of gaelic football as a sport and a spectacle.
Massively competitive, including at provincial level, with the ideal balance of skill, fitness and physicality.

Hard to argue with this and the questions have to be asked what has changed in the interim period.

I would argue the professionalisation of coaching/ managing teams has lead to a fear of losing rather than an excitement to go and play to win. If I as a manager am getting paid then it is my job to win at all cost to keep my job and keep the money coming in. This has filtered down to the club scene in almost every county if not all. We have these mercenaries taking clubs for the pound/euro with no connection to them, imposing systems of play designed not too lose.

Obviously scale that up and the counties with the biggest budgets/ playing populations are always going to go away form the rest. But at the end of the day these are club players and they are being polluted by these 'not to lose' coaches before they get the length of the county squad so the mentality is already there.

Of course not one wants to go out and lose none of the teams of the past did, but there was also that pride in actually going to win, going to beat your direct opponent and giving it everything possible on the day. Pride in being a winner rather than a non-loser.

Hard to see a reverse of this blight on a great game (and thats from a hurling person).

[sid waddell]

I think football is in a very bad place at the moment.

People are confusing a lack of competitiveness (and is Gaelic football any worse in that regard than it has ever been?) with the health of the sport and how it is being played.

Gaelic football now is being played to a higher standard than ever before. That is unarguable. The skills are better, the fitness is better, competitive games are generally more exciting than they have ever been. This doesn't fit the populist narrative, but it's a fact.

The great games of this decade are the greatest games of all-time.

Dublin v Kerry 2013 and 2016.
Dublin v Mayo 2015 and 2017.
Mayo v Kerry 2014 x 2 and 2017 x 2.
Dublin v Donegal 2014.

Look into what's happening in the 2018 championship. There have been brilliant games all over the place.

Tyrone v Monaghan - brilliant.
Donegal played superb football in their four games in Ulster. They played plenty of it again against Dublin.

Even in Leinster, there were some cracking games - Laois v Wexford, Offaly v Wicklow, wins fro Carlow over Kildare and Longford over Meath.

The qualifiers have been full to the brim with classics.
Meath v Tyrone
Derry v Kildare
Tipperary v Mayo
Kildare v Mayo
Offaly v Clare
Wexford v Waterford
Armagh v Clare
Roscommon v Armagh

There were other very solid, competitive games:
Cavan v Down
Longford v Kildare
Monaghan v Laois
Cavan v Tyrone
Sligo v Armagh
Offaly v Antrim

High scores are being racked up all over the place.

Galway v Kerry on Sunday was derided. Yet that game finished 1-13 to 1-10. That used to be considered reasonably high scoring, you know. Meath v Dublin 1997, for instance was regarded at the time as a brilliant, thrilling game. Yet it finished with the exact same scoreline, 1-13 to 1-10.

There is no problem with the sport as it is played or with the rules.

People's problems are with bad coaches and bad tactics, and they will always exist and have always existed.

There's an incredible hysteria throughout Gaelic football pundits and followers of looking at the past through rose tinted glasses here.

The standard of Gaelic football 25 years ago, or even 15 years ago, was, compared to now, shit.

It's really not, on both counts.
The period from the mid-nineties to the mid-noughties was the pinnacle of gaelic football as a sport and a spectacle.
Massively competitive, including at provincial level, with the ideal balance of skill, fitness and physicality.

I would think that too if I was from Meath.

A couple of weekends ago Eir Sport (I think) showed a re-run of the 1992 Munster Final. I had nostalgic memories of this game, as was on holidays in Clare at the time, and remember the celebrations well. I had never seen the game since, but it was absolutely chronic. The skill level was abysmal, with the notable exception of Maurice Fitzgerald. The only tactic for both sides was to kick the ball as long and as hard as they could in the general direction of their opponents goals.

We have different game now, for a number of reasons. It is not perfect, but it has been much worse in the past.

The vast majority of games of the time were like that.

There are some amount of turkeys of games from the 1990s that have either been forgotten about or dressed up as classics when they were anything but.

The standard of football in the four Dublin-Meath games of 1991, for instance, was dreadful. Those teams would lose by a minimum of 20 points to the top teams of today, probably 30.

Excitement and quality are two very different things.

I think a lot of people have forgotten the many turkeys of matches from the 1990s and 2000s.

All this guff about the standard of Gaelic football and how the game needs utterly ridiculous, unworkable rule changes (every rule change suggested here is such and then some) is Trump/Brexit-esque.

Unfocussed, irrational anger, head in the sand, heavy on rhetoric, low on detail, no solutions, no idea of even what the supposed "problems" are.

[Jinxy]

Sid, we're all playing and watching the game long enough.
You can tell me things have never been better than they are now till the cows come home, all I know is that when the SKY deal came in I was genuinely angry I was going to miss some televised games and now I find I don't really care anymore.
Sure what am I missing?
Maybe the solution is to take big games away from Croke Park and we'll see if that has a tangible effect over the next couple of weekends.
It's a faint hope, but a hope nonetheless.
Otherwise, I find myself gradually morphing into 'a hurling fan myself'.

[sid waddell]

What great games were there in the 1990s?

I mean genuinely great games?

Off the top of my head, I can think of:
The second half of the 1991 Down v Meath All-Ireland final - the first half was dreadful
1994 Derry v Down
1997 Meath v Kildare
Maybe the last 10 minutes of the fourth Dublin-Meath game in 1991
Maybe Dublin-Derry 1993

And that's about it.

Sure there were plenty of good, competitive, exciting games.

And there were tons of turkeys, far too numerous to mention.

[LeoMc]

What great games were there in the 1990s?

I mean genuinely great games?

Off the top of my head, I can think of:
The second half of the 1991 Down v Meath All-Ireland final - the first half was dreadful
1994 Derry v Down
1997 Meath v Kildare
Maybe the last 10 minutes of the fourth Dublin-Meath game in 1991
Maybe Dublin-Derry 1993

And that's about it.

Sure there were plenty of good, competitive, exciting games.

And there were tons of turkeys, far too numerous to mention.

Sid, we're all playing and watching the game long enough.
You can tell me things have never been better than they are now till the cows come home, all I know is that when the SKY deal came in I was genuinely angry I was going to miss some televised games and now I find I don't really care anymore.
Sure what am I missing?
Maybe the solution is to take big games away from Croke Park and we'll see if that has a tangible effect over the next couple of weekends.
It's a faint hope, but a hope nonetheless.
Otherwise, I find myself gradually morphing into 'a hurling fan myself'.

There were fewer turkeys on TV back in the day.

[sid waddell]

Sid, we're all playing and watching the game long enough.
You can tell me things have never been better than they are now till the cows come home, all I know is that when the SKY deal came in I was genuinely angry I was going to miss some televised games and now I find I don't really care anymore.
Sure what am I missing?
Maybe the solution is to take big games away from Croke Park and we'll see if that has a tangible effect over the next couple of weekends.
It's a faint hope, but a hope nonetheless.
Otherwise, I find myself gradually morphing into 'a hurling fan myself'.

Classic Trump/Brexit thinking.

You don't know what you're moaning about, but you'll moan about "it" anyway, whatever "it" is.

Venues and TV channels have nothing to do with the standard of Gaelic football or the rules of the sport.

I do wonder how some people ever survived in the supposed 1990s "golden era". Before 1996 there wasn't even anything in the way of proper live television coverage of the championships.

[mrdeeds]

There were less bad games years ago because there were less games on TV. Also games then meant more because lose and you're out. There has being some great games this year in the back door because they are knock out. The super 8s last week are not do or die and maybe one reason why Donegal didn't push up because they were thinking of score difference. Mayo games in recent years have being top class in terms of entertainment because they were shit or bust.

[sid waddell]

There were less bad games years ago because there were less games on TV. Also games then meant more because lose and you're out. There has being some great games this year in the back door because they are knock out. The super 8s last week are not do or die and maybe one reason why Donegal didn't push up because they were thinking of score difference. Mayo games in recent years have being top class in terms of entertainment because they were shit or bust.

We routinely get excellent, exciting games in the league.

The provincial hurling championships were run on a round robin basis this year and we got thrillers each week.

The format does not determine whether a game will be exciting or not.

People say Donegal did not push up on Dublin because of scoring difference, but the group is unlikely to come down to scoring difference, and even as it was, Donegal were 22 points behind Tyrone on scoring difference, a gap which will be almost impossible to close.

Tyrone trailed Mayo by a point with very little time left in the All-Ireland quarter-final two years ago and didn't push up, just like Donegal. That was a knock out game.

The problem with both Tyrone in that game and Donegal on Saturday was not the format in either case, it was shit tactics on those teams' parts in not trying to get the ball back.

[trailer]

I think football is in a very bad place at the moment.

People are confusing a lack of competitiveness (and is Gaelic football any worse in that regard than it has ever been?) with the health of the sport and how it is being played.

Gaelic football now is being played to a higher standard than ever before. That is unarguable. The skills are better, the fitness is better, competitive games are generally more exciting than they have ever been. This doesn't fit the populist narrative, but it's a fact.

The great games of this decade are the greatest games of all-time.

Dublin v Kerry 2013 and 2016.
Dublin v Mayo 2015 and 2017.
Mayo v Kerry 2014 x 2 and 2017 x 2.
Dublin v Donegal 2014.

Look into what's happening in the 2018 championship. There have been brilliant games all over the place.

Tyrone v Monaghan - brilliant.
Donegal played superb football in their four games in Ulster. They played plenty of it again against Dublin.

Even in Leinster, there were some cracking games - Laois v Wexford, Offaly v Wicklow, wins fro Carlow over Kildare and Longford over Meath.

The qualifiers have been full to the brim with classics.
Meath v Tyrone
Derry v Kildare
Tipperary v Mayo
Kildare v Mayo
Offaly v Clare
Wexford v Waterford
Armagh v Clare
Roscommon v Armagh

There were other very solid, competitive games:
Cavan v Down
Longford v Kildare
Monaghan v Laois
Cavan v Tyrone
Sligo v Armagh
Offaly v Antrim

High scores are being racked up all over the place.

Galway v Kerry on Sunday was derided. Yet that game finished 1-13 to 1-10. That used to be considered reasonably high scoring, you know. Meath v Dublin 1997, for instance was regarded at the time as a brilliant, thrilling game. Yet it finished with the exact same scoreline, 1-13 to 1-10.

There is no problem with the sport as it is played or with the rules.

People's problems are with bad coaches and bad tactics, and they will always exist and have always existed.

There's an incredible hysteria throughout Gaelic football pundits and followers of looking at the past through rose tinted glasses here.

The standard of Gaelic football 25 years ago, or even 15 years ago, was, compared to now, shit.

It's really not, on both counts.
The period from the mid-nineties to the mid-noughties was the pinnacle of gaelic football as a sport and a spectacle.
Massively competitive, including at provincial level, with the ideal balance of skill, fitness and physicality.

Hard to argue with this and the questions have to be asked what has changed in the interim period.

I would argue the professionalisation of coaching/ managing teams has lead to a fear of losing rather than an excitement to go and play to win. If I as a manager am getting paid then it is my job to win at all cost to keep my job and keep the money coming in. This has filtered down to the club scene in almost every county if not all. We have these mercenaries taking clubs for the pound/euro with no connection to them, imposing systems of play designed not too lose.

Obviously scale that up and the counties with the biggest budgets/ playing populations are always going to go away form the rest. But at the end of the day these are club players and they are being polluted by these 'not to lose' coaches before they get the length of the county squad so the mentality is already there.

Of course not one wants to go out and lose none of the teams of the past did, but there was also that pride in actually going to win, going to beat your direct opponent and giving it everything possible on the day. Pride in being a winner rather than a non-loser.

Hard to see a reverse of this blight on a great game (and thats from a hurling person).

This is peak Brolly here. Go out to win rather than going out be a non loser? What in the name of God does this mean? Surely every team goes out to win AND be a non loser?

[Itchy]

I think football is in a very bad place at the moment.

People are confusing a lack of competitiveness (and is Gaelic football any worse in that regard than it has ever been?) with the health of the sport and how it is being played.

Gaelic football now is being played to a higher standard than ever before. That is unarguable. The skills are better, the fitness is better, competitive games are generally more exciting than they have ever been. This doesn't fit the populist narrative, but it's a fact.

The great games of this decade are the greatest games of all-time.

Dublin v Kerry 2013 and 2016.
Dublin v Mayo 2015 and 2017.
Mayo v Kerry 2014 x 2 and 2017 x 2.
Dublin v Donegal 2014.

Look into what's happening in the 2018 championship. There have been brilliant games all over the place.

Tyrone v Monaghan - brilliant.
Donegal played superb football in their four games in Ulster. They played plenty of it again against Dublin.

Even in Leinster, there were some cracking games - Laois v Wexford, Offaly v Wicklow, wins fro Carlow over Kildare and Longford over Meath.

The qualifiers have been full to the brim with classics.
Meath v Tyrone
Derry v Kildare
Tipperary v Mayo
Kildare v Mayo
Offaly v Clare
Wexford v Waterford
Armagh v Clare
Roscommon v Armagh

There were other very solid, competitive games:
Cavan v Down
Longford v Kildare
Monaghan v Laois
Cavan v Tyrone
Sligo v Armagh
Offaly v Antrim

High scores are being racked up all over the place.

Galway v Kerry on Sunday was derided. Yet that game finished 1-13 to 1-10. That used to be considered reasonably high scoring, you know. Meath v Dublin 1997, for instance was regarded at the time as a brilliant, thrilling game. Yet it finished with the exact same scoreline, 1-13 to 1-10.

There is no problem with the sport as it is played or with the rules.

People's problems are with bad coaches and bad tactics, and they will always exist and have always existed.

There's an incredible hysteria throughout Gaelic football pundits and followers of looking at the past through rose tinted glasses here.

The standard of Gaelic football 25 years ago, or even 15 years ago, was, compared to now, shit.

It's really not, on both counts.
The period from the mid-nineties to the mid-noughties was the pinnacle of gaelic football as a sport and a spectacle.
Massively competitive, including at provincial level, with the ideal balance of skill, fitness and physicality.

I would think that too if I was from Meath.

A couple of weekends ago Eir Sport (I think) showed a re-run of the 1992 Munster Final. I had nostalgic memories of this game, as was on holidays in Clare at the time, and remember the celebrations well. I had never seen the game since, but it was absolutely chronic. The skill level was abysmal, with the notable exception of Maurice Fitzgerald. The only tactic for both sides was to kick the ball as long and as hard as they could in the general direction of their opponents goals.

We have different game now, for a number of reasons. It is not perfect, but it has been much worse in the past.

Just because it is better than in the past it does not mean it shouldnt be tweaked. I was at two of those games listed as "competitive" and they were absolute shite and boring. With two very small attendances. Any small change than can make the game more offensive and exciting should be considered. Other sports do it all the time so why not?

[Jinxy]

Sid, we're all playing and watching the game long enough.
You can tell me things have never been better than they are now till the cows come home, all I know is that when the SKY deal came in I was genuinely angry I was going to miss some televised games and now I find I don't really care anymore.
Sure what am I missing?
Maybe the solution is to take big games away from Croke Park and we'll see if that has a tangible effect over the next couple of weekends.
It's a faint hope, but a hope nonetheless.
Otherwise, I find myself gradually morphing into 'a hurling fan myself'.

Classic Trump/Brexit thinking.

You don't know what you're moaning about, but you'll moan about "it" anyway, whatever "it" is.

Venues and TV channels have nothing to do with the standard of Gaelic football or the rules of the sport.

I do wonder how some people ever survived in the supposed 1990s "golden era". Before 1996 there wasn't even anything in the way of proper live television coverage of the championships.

Yeah, because this is literally the first time we have discussed this issue on gaaboard.
I've said nothing about this specific issue on multiple occasions in recent years.
Wind your neck in a small bit.

[sid waddell]

Sid, we're all playing and watching the game long enough.
You can tell me things have never been better than they are now till the cows come home, all I know is that when the SKY deal came in I was genuinely angry I was going to miss some televised games and now I find I don't really care anymore.
Sure what am I missing?
Maybe the solution is to take big games away from Croke Park and we'll see if that has a tangible effect over the next couple of weekends.
It's a faint hope, but a hope nonetheless.
Otherwise, I find myself gradually morphing into 'a hurling fan myself'.

Classic Trump/Brexit thinking.

You don't know what you're moaning about, but you'll moan about "it" anyway, whatever "it" is.

Venues and TV channels have nothing to do with the standard of Gaelic football or the rules of the sport.

I do wonder how some people ever survived in the supposed 1990s "golden era". Before 1996 there wasn't even anything in the way of proper live television coverage of the championships.

Yeah, because this is literally the first time we have discussed this issue on gaaboard.
I've said nothing about this specific issue on multiple occasions in recent years.
Wind your neck in a small bit.

This thread is about the rules of the game.

There is nothing wrong with the rules of the game or how the sport of Gaelic football is being played.

Under the current rules of Gaelic football, we are getting classic games such as the Dublin v Mayo final, the two Mayo-Kerry semi-finals, Tyrone v Monaghan this year.

Every single suggestion of a rule change here is unworkable, unnecessary and has ignored the law of unintended consequences, ie straight out of the Trump/Brexit-style playbook.

Your complaints seem to amount to a television deal you don't like and the venues of certain games. These things have nothing to do with the rules or the standard of the game.

As Ger Loughnane once told Eamon Cregan, this amounts to little more than a whinge.

[trailer]

Those advocating for a rule change on this issue are simply saying the big boys have taken our ball and they won't give it back. It's yapping at a professional level.

Now there are other issues and some people are getting confused between a good team keeping the ball off another team and Gaelic football as a spectacle in general. Venue's, home advantage etc are all things that can be sorted out relatively easily, but to want to change the entire fabric of the game because one team is better than another is complete and utter madness. And some of the "proposals" coming from people on this thread are absolutely ridiculous. Shot clocks, limiting hand passes, not crossing back over half way and a combination of some or all of those. Idea's written on the bag of a fag packet and frankly that's where they should remain.