Positive proposals at last to address the spectacle of Gaelic Football

[JoG2]

surely these rules will get canned before the league, no way can they plough on with them

It' too easy for the naysayers to shoot down every proposal then so

The current state of the game has seriously reduced attendances .

Crap teams put 13 men behind the ball . Win  a few games and then call themselves football teams. Of course they don't want to change.

Some of the players on these teams might have to try to kick the ball sometime

These may not be the answer but at least it's a start to moving towards some rules that actually improve the game

there is no point in using the opinion of current intercounty managers to change the game .... that's just hilarious.

Which of the new rules actually improve the game?

You are happy enough to follow the opinion of TV pundits to change the playing rules , but not that of managers involved in the game??

You don't think many managers have a vested interest in resisting change? Harte for example has opposed every single rule change for years. How to you account for this? Also, which TV pundits were on the rule change committee? On Brollys last article he claimed one of the people on the committee told him that his ideas would have been better coming from someone other than Joe himself, is that then not the opposite of what you are saying.

Bonner is crying about them as his game plan is to sit deep and break at high speed and restricting hand passes curtails him doing this - thats good! I contend a lot of this complaining is fear of the unknown and maybe an insecurity of their own abilities as coaches to be innovative to the new rules. I am not saying the rules are perfect, I see a few flaws in them already myself but I work of the principle of change and then adjust instead of talking and talking and talking about what should and could be done because you know what you will never get agreement from Mickey Harte and Poacher and all these "gurus" to any change.

People need to relax and give it a bloody chance.

I think we need to split the rules into 2.
1. The 3 handpass rule
2. The rest

For me, having seen 2 games, the handpass rule is a complete non-runner . From a defensive point of view the game hasn't changed. For  periods of the Fermanagh Derry game yesterday, teams had all men back. The only difference is men are kicking the ball 5/10/15 yards when they would have handpassed the ball prior to this trial period. From a spectator's point of view, instead of watching the game and seeing the play build, watching runners etc, you're spending the entire game counting fecking handpasses. You can hear the crowd, 1, 2, 3.....KICK IT! You've players who are running into position, breaking away from their marker and not knowing what number of handpasses have been played, didn't hear the shout and makes the 4th handpass. Opposition players screaming 4 passes. In both games to date, excellent link play between forwards and link players is being blown up as they break through due to the 4th handpass. It's an absolute balls


No amount of relaxing and giving it a bloody chance will change this imo. It's just too much of a seismic change in the game for me

The rest: I'd like to see more of the offensive mark and I'd back the sinbin 100%

[LeoMc]

OK I have updated my opinion, 1 of 4 of Brollys suggestions would have no negative impact on the game.

I have to say I like Brolly's ideas

- no pass back into your own half
- Goalkeeper cannot be used in open play
- the idea of an exclusion zone ( very difficult to implement at club level)
- kickouts past the 45metre  line

Worth a trial in my view

No 1 could work, it would be worth a trial.
No 2 similar but it would eliminate the Rory Beggans of the world going forward to support the attack as they could not receive a return pass.
No 3 could not work at club level and I am not sure it would work at any level. If a defender slips or pulls a hamstring does his man get a free run at goal?
No 4 Joe proposed before and after a bit of fanfare and a challenge game in Monaghan quietly dropped it. Allowing only 4 men between the 45s will not lead to 1960s style high fielding contests. It will lead to keepers chipping the ball out into the chest of running mid-fielders. No 50:50 contests just guaranteed possession for the kicking team.

The kicking past the 45 what's not in place now or a different variation?  Brolly wanted everyone outside the 45's except the 4 mid-fielders.

I honestly don't see any problem with the keeper getting a ball in open play...look at the laois keeper last year and how many touches in open play do keepers actually have, I never saw it as a negative tactic, just a safe one. It is a negative step in terms of the development of the keepers role but it could potentially reduce the extra man teams would have to hold possession.

The no backwards passing in your own half, please no....too Many marginal call on sideways passes to be made and i don't see possession in your own half as a problem, teams don't mess around with the ball in their own half, they try work space and try create an opportunity to get up the pitch... it's when you cross the halfway line and meet the blanket defence it gets bad to watch. I have thought some more about this. IT would actually be worse than what we have (should have known with Joe's in depth analysis). The defensive team would know that any players sitting back were out of the game and it would make it easier to saturate their own defensicve area. There would be no incentive to keep players forward to put pressure on the free man or keeper at the back.

Exclusion zone, not sure what this entails but I don't like restrictions being put on players. Again more Joe bollixology.

[blewuporstuffed]

Im not a fan of the offensive mark, but happy to see it trailed and see how it works in reality.
The black card has bee a disaster since introduced, so happy to see the sin bin  change to it and see how that plays out.
I agree about the restricted handpass. A complete non runner from the start.

[BennyCake]

Possession football is boring. Ball retention, no risk strategies, sideways/backwards football are boring the shite out of us all. More kicking into forwards is needed. More skilful forwards is needed. Players won't kick ball to forwards as there's no room. What we need is more room.

The solution, as I've said many times = less players.

It's a no brainer.

[blewuporstuffed]

Possession football is boring. Ball retention, no risk strategies, sideways/backwards football are boring the shite out of us all. More kicking into forwards is needed. More skilful forwards is needed. Players won't kick ball to forwards as there's no room. What we need is more room.

The solution, as I've said many times = less players.

It's a no brainer.

I agree with you there, it just needs addressed the right way.
My big reservation about reducing team size is that the negative affect it would have in participation, particularly at youth level.

For me, you have to consider why so many managers bring extra defenders back, and the reason is that a 1v1 battle has become next to impossible to win for a defender.
black/yellow/red cards are now so easy to come by, that the defenders also take a now risk strategy when it comes to making a tackle or trying to win the ball. We then have players getting away regularly with 7/8 )( and sometimes more) steps, that making a clean challenge becomes very very difficult.
By gradually leaning the rules towards the forwards over the last number of years in an attempt to promote attacking high scoring football, what we have done is the complete opposite.
Managers now feel like they cant depend on a man marker, so bring additional men back, leading to the type of game we now see.

[macdanger2]

Am I correct in saying that brolly's idea of no pass back into your own half is the same rule as basketball? If so, it's one of the worst rule change proposals I've heard of. Teams would just defend from the halfway and then swarm the player as he crosses the halfway line.

[macdanger2]

Possession football is boring. Ball retention, no risk strategies, sideways/backwards football are boring the shite out of us all. More kicking into forwards is needed. More skilful forwards is needed. Players won't kick ball to forwards as there's no room. What we need is more room.

The solution, as I've said many times = less players.

It's a no brainer.

I agree with you there, it just needs addressed the right way.
My big reservation about reducing team size is that the negative affect it would have in participation, particularly at youth level.

For me, you have to consider why so many managers bring extra defenders back, and the reason is that a 1v1 battle has become next to impossible to win for a defender.
black/yellow/red cards are now so easy to come by, that the defenders also take a now risk strategy when it comes to making a tackle or trying to win the ball. We then have players getting away regularly with 7/8 )( and sometimes more) steps, that making a clean challenge becomes very very difficult.
By gradually leaning the rules towards the forwards over the last number of years in an attempt to promote attacking high scoring football, what we have done is the complete opposite.
Managers now feel like they cant depend on a man marker, so bring additional men back, leading to the type of game we now see.

Enforcing the steps rule would be a great starting point tbf

[bigpackiechestout]

After watching the Tyrone v Ulster University game yesterday my thoughts on the handpass rule are as follows. The intention behind the rule is presumably to discourage the slow build up play and to encourage teams to leave more forwards in position. Yesterday we saw that this did not happen. Instead both teams set out as they otherwise would have, except that when building the play up around the 45s they kicked more shorter passes where they would previously have handpassed, in order to save their handpasses for when they were needed. You also had instances of lads turning around and kicking backwards or sideways when an attack was building nicely, simply because the 3 handpass limit was reached, the opposition had extra men behind the ball so no kickpass was on, and the player in possession was afraid of being caught.

Therefore the rule has resulted in more inconsequential kicking around the middle third in order to meet the requirements of the rule, but hasn't encouraged teams to launch more ball into the full forward line (why would they) or keep more men up the pitch, as per the spirit of the rule.

This could have been easily predicted before the rule was ever trialed. I have no qualms about writing this rule off at this early stage and hope the trial does not continue into the League.

[tippabu]

Possession football is boring. Ball retention, no risk strategies, sideways/backwards football are boring the shite out of us all. More kicking into forwards is needed. More skilful forwards is needed. Players won't kick ball to forwards as there's no room. What we need is more room.

The solution, as I've said many times = less players.

It's a no brainer.

Agree with you in regards to this being a possible solution and spoke a number of times why I feel there are multiple positive outcomes from it. Most rules being proposed here and officially are trying to encourage kicking but doing nothing to tackle the bigger problem of no space for attackers and packed defences....I don't want to see kicking for pickings sake, a return to get the ball and kick it as long and blindly as posible will make for a truly awful spectacle in my opinion. More space should equal more quality kicking I feel

[Itchy]

Okay, one step at a time I guess... explain how the handpass rule discourages Donegal from "sitting deep"?

It does not discourage teams from sitting back but it should encourage teams to push up on the opposition which i suppose is the same thing. This is only my opinion and coincidentally, in the Cavan McKenna cup game yesterday it came to pass. Cavan decided to aggressively push up on Queens when they came out, when you throw a kick into the mix it forced queens to kick the ball under pressure and with a kick over say 20 meters being inherently less accurate than a 2 yard handpass, Cavan were able to turn over possession higher up he field and get a number of easier scores. Cavan did try the same against Down but had less success but I put that down to the team developing this style of play and not being particularly efficient in it. In short Cavans new manager is innovating while Down manager in particular is stuck in a rut trying to mimic Jim McGuinness's winning formula from a decade ago.

Now I have stated that I have seen a lot of teams foul the ball when in an attacking position which i think is wrong, so I would tweak the rule to say once you enter the opposition half or 45 (whichever makes more sense) there is no counting of handpasses.

2nd example. If a player gets a mark for catching the ball clean in the oppositions 45, surely it makes sense to push up and put pressure on the kicker as well as to mark tight and put pressure on the receiver?

I'd really love to see that tweak to the hand pass rule implemented before the league, especially to stop eejits showing videos of "great" goals that would be disallowed in todays game.

[Itchy]

I also think Bonner and Harte etc would rather moan and whinge about the rules, get them thrown out now instead of actually sitting down and seeing how they would make them work for their team. Of all teams I think Donegal could do really well if they pushed up hard on the opposition.

[Rossfan]

Will all the whining and whinging by managers make delegates more determined to press ahead with the proposed changes?

[trueblue1234]

I also think Bonner and Harte etc would rather moan and whinge about the rules, get them thrown out now instead of actually sitting down and seeing how they would make them work for their team. Of all teams I think Donegal could do really well if they pushed up hard on the opposition.

Are the managers not allowed to voice their opinion on the rules the same as everyone else? If they think they are sh!te, surely they are entitled to say that. Doesn't mean they have to be listened to but I wouldn't expect them to lie about what they thought of them either.

[Itchy]

I also think Bonner and Harte etc would rather moan and whinge about the rules, get them thrown out now instead of actually sitting down and seeing how they would make them work for their team. Of all teams I think Donegal could do really well if they pushed up hard on the opposition.

Are the managers not allowed to voice their opinion on the rules the same as everyone else? If they think they are sh!te, surely they are entitled to say that. Doesn't mean they have to be listened to but I wouldn't expect them to lie about what they thought of them either.

They are I suppose but would it not be nice to hear them say "I dont think they will work but I will work with them and lets see how it pans out" Instead we have them lining up to moan after 1 or 2 games having made no attempt in most cases to innovate within those rules.

[JoG2]

I also think Bonner and Harte etc would rather moan and whinge about the rules, get them thrown out now instead of actually sitting down and seeing how they would make them work for their team. Of all teams I think Donegal could do really well if they pushed up hard on the opposition.

It's Bonner and Harte's game as much as it is anyone elses. I've yet to speak to a single person during a game or not who agrees it's a good idea. Fair enough, against the vast majority you've went rogue, but you're sailing in a fairly small ship. BTW, have you seen Donegal play of late?