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[Three men up and the two point arc have been a huge success in solving that problem]

Back and forth handpassing went on for years.
Yes, up to opposition to contest the ball
Yes. You're not meant to break the rules.

So you don't think the rules have any room for improvement?

There's always room for improvement.

Going back to the pre-FRC status quo is not it.

Personally, I don't really care about the hooter, as that was never the issue.

The issue was teams packing their 45 and back. Three men up and the two point arc have been a huge success in solving that problem and must be kept.

Using the 45 line to separate two pointers is a waste of time as teams will simply pack the middle given that very few scores are ever got from shots on the wing beyond the 45.

I'm also loving the midfield contests now that the short kick out set up has encouraged high pressing.

I don't think it  has. There's as much  handpassing and constant recycling around the  arc, maybe even more,  than  there was before.

Rules that actually  draws out the likes  of Clifford, the best forward in the game, from the opposition goal , is nothing to be celebrated. The arc and  3v3 rule  were apparently  designed to  give the likes of him more room  to do their thing inside, near the goal. It's done the  exact opposite.

In my opinion , the 2 pointer and  arc rules have  totally changed the game for the worse. It's a  massive  stain on  the game, and slowly  pushing me away from watching.

The option not to increase a goal to 4 points or even 5 looks like a missed one as time progresses.

Absolutely not. There would be no point (pun intended) in going for points anymore. They would be largely useless I think.

Expect a hard fought game but Armagh  to win by 3/4 at the end.
Anything else is a shock.
For me there are 4 teams who can win Sam and outside of Donegal  or Kerry it's Armagh and Galway .
Just need confirmation fully that Rian is back and I would be a lot more confident from an Orchard point of view

Just accept there's no Rian this year mate

Yeah that's what I am hearing too unfortunately. No Grimley, Soupy or Connaire Mackin either. Decent enough squad to absorb those but may ultimately make a difference when push comes to shove

Compromise on it could be keep last years hooter rule but ball must go dead either for a wide or a score. This years rule is brutal.

Apparently the Carlow players only found out they'd have a hooter in place for the league final on the Thursday before, bad work. 

No issue whatsoever with going back to last year's hooter set up. No idea why they felt the need to change it in the first place.

That score of Cliffords before half time in last years final annoyed a lot of people, I thought it was excellent play by Kerry and poor work by Donegal rather than a rules issue. One tweak would be to make the ball have to go wide/over the bar inside of just out of play. Was it last years Ulster final yourselves kept the ball brilliantly at the end of extra time and we eventually fouled to force yous into hitting a free.

The problem is the hooter rule was introduced to ensure teams had roughly equivalent amounts of time playing each way so that environmental factors etc would be balanced out. Any tweak to the current hooter wouldn't really achieve that. So I'd either keep it as is in the hope someone finds a way to stop the killing of time at the end of half's or I'd get rid of it entirely.

The above post from gallsman exposes the shallowness of the new rule zealots who cannot countenance any unintended negative consequences of the new rules. The issue of additional time would only occasionally have arisen in the past.

In contrast those who critique the new rules do so with the intention of highlighting the unintended consequences and they suggest improvements/compromises to address the issues, e.g. suggestion from Armagh18 to allow 2-pointers outside 45m.

Maybe the zealots might admit that the new rules can do with improvement and engage properly in the debate.

I'm not a zealot.

The sports I watch the most - Gaelic Football, NFL, soccer and rugby union - all have aspects/rules that drive me mad.

But the one that in my lifetime went from the most unhinged and unpredictable to becoming the most tedious and unwatchable, courtesy of over coaching, was Gaelic Football.

It needed a full overhaul.

And for the most part, I believe that overhaul has been a proper success.

Is it perfect? No, no it's not. No sport is perfect, and I don't actually believe most sports have the same cultural problem that Gaelic Football has, whereby coaches feel it is their role, purpose, priority to abuse the intentions of those rules.

Over time I'll be happy to see the rules adapt, especially as and when coaches make the sport unwatchable again. But for now I'm really enjoying watching Gaelic Football, and the last thing therefore I'm going to do - at this moment - is look for ways to change it.

It took me about 3-4 weeks after the new rules were released to realise this. I was as sceptical as anyone originally. But then I found myself  enjoying match ups like Roscommon v Tyrone. Just 12 months previous I'd sooner had done a novena than tune into the muck those counties were producing.

A perfectly sensible and understandable view point. Not one I agree with but at least one that I can understand. At least if I understand it properly. You didn't like what football had become. Now you enjoy football therefore in support of the new rules.

I approach it differently. I did enjoy football before although I accept there was some turgid stuff. I don't like what it's become with points and goals both devalued in many ways. With certain skills prioritised over others and with weather conditions and referring play a far more important role now than I feel they should. I don't think there's as many good games anymore and I think there's as many or at least as many turgid ones. I also think the new rules make for a better tv product for a neutral and a worse product for non neutral fans in attendance.

For context one of my favourite games as a neutral ever was Donegal v Dublin during  McGuinesses first time in charge maybe 2014. I thought it fascinating to see the contrast in styles that day. I'm not sure there's much contrast in the new rules.

SpaceX have a launch site down on the Tex-Mex border.

Yeah in Brownstown. About 6 hours away from Austin.

Return flights to Austin are really great value.

I got to see starship launch, until you see it up close you cant understand the size or power of it. Ridiculous in many ways.

Largest rocket ever built and it casually launches every few months.

The new V3 starship is almost the size of the Seattle space needle.

Austin?

The thing is even if those fellas aren't fit for 70 minutes getting 3 or 4 them back gives Armagh a strong bench again which more than any one player is probably Armagh's biggest strength over the last few years. They are probably the county that is most stronger than the sum of its parts.

It also allows for greater options for balance. Arguably Armagh started the last day with 9 defenders 1 midfielder and 4 forwards. The substitution brought much better balance and Armagh came back into the game. I don't think that was unconnected.

"Murphy to face no further punishment over Casey incident" from RTE. Did we see the same clip as the ones that make these decisions

The only way further action could have been taken is if the referee confirmed that neither he nor his team saw the incident. Be pretty hard to claim that given Murphy was booked and Gough intimated it was for striking.

Armagh very hard to beat at home!

They lost 2 of their 3 league games at home.

I think this is a real no win game for Armagh that they really need to find a way to get through.

All the pressure on Armagh following a mixed league. Tyrone with no pressure now that passage to the all Ireland is assured. They also have a very good team that could click on any given day.

Armagh really need to win to get at least one more competitive games for players returning from injury.

Win and all you'll hear is Tyrone are out of sorts. Lose and it's a very difficult season.

Not 100% sure lads but pretty sure if he was driving after 10pm or 11pm they put it down as a low score and the more he done it they eventually said your score went below a threshold so we are cancelling your policy. They did refund what we were owed.

Hasting were a different animal though...my lad had a minor accident and the following week they cancelled his insurance or made us cancel it as they said his driving score fell below 30, i checked the date on their App and it was telling us different so i went back to them and screen shotted the evidence so they changed the date, I again went back with more screen shots for their new dates so they changed dates again and kept doing this until our time ran out and the policy had been cancelled. Basically they kept making dates up and when i provided screen shots from our phones with their App it made no difference.
On the small print of the policy it stated that if you have an accident and you're at fault and your policy is cancelled they will keep your fee and it's non refundable. So £2k just vanished for a policy that was only out 3 weeks.
I appealed their decision and lost and then took it to the Finanical Ambudsman and they took the Insurnace (Hastings) side...

Interesting doesn't sound lawful to me particularly due to this issue relating to Articles 92 and 94 of the Road Traffic (Northern Ireland) Order 1981.

In my case what happened was my sister in law went on a university placement abroad for 6 weeks. During that time her dad borrowed her car (took out his own insurance for it). They complained they were getting black box data but no matching app data. My sister in law contacted them to explain the situation and they said that was fine provided she drove the car again by 4th Feb and uploaded the app data. She did that but they purported to cancel the policy anyway.

We appealed to the ombudsman and lost so I started a civil claim. Eventually they settled by returning the whole policy cost and removing any reference to a cancelled policy from the database. It was that note of cancellation on the database that was going to cost her thousands for a new policy.

[I don't see any of that down being to the rules though.]

David if you've rewatched the game multiple times then you can't have missed the commentators talking about the pigeons.

Yes. During an AI final they were talking about pigeons. Because nothing else was happening.

They make one reference to the pigeon after the game restarts from the stoppage for clearing the pigeon.  Its not reflective of the game as a whole. Fitzmaurice at one stage called in the best final in recent memory.  Certainly it was far superior to last years affair

Was it not a seagull?

Fact of the matter is 1 out of 7 knockout games from the qf on last year were good games.

What was the good game?

Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed Meath-Galway, Donegal-Monaghan and Kerry-Armagh.

I enjoyed our semi against Meath for personal reasons, although that was obviously very one-sided.

But the two Tyrone games were not very competitive, neither was the final.

I don't see any of that down being to the rules though.

The job Kerry did on Armagh in that second half was one of the most fascinating periods of football I've seen in a long time. I expect, for neutrals, that their similar demo job on us in the first 20 minutes of the final was similar.

I think this is my point and I'm speaking generally and not about you specifically but there seems to be an almost cult like zeal that when games are good at the minute it's because of the new rules but when they aren't it's nothing to do with rules.

Apart from the solo and go I see very little positive and plenty of negatives. That said I can understand that may not be the majority opinion.

[The Meath systemic fouling might but that's the first time I can recall seeing it this year]

The Meath systemic fouling might but that's the first time I can recall seeing it this year
They did the same at the end if the first round league game against Derry.

I did not see that game

No, not Hastings...I think it was Admiral that cancelled on us for driving at night.

My cub had a minor accident and Hastings cancelled the insurnace on him and kept the £2k ploicy fee and said it was in the small print. Took them up on it but Finanical Ambudsman took their side

Did they refuse to indemnify or did they try to get the son prosecuted for no insurance?  I am very fed up when insurers cancels policies often unlawfully and then demand people be wrongly prosecuted.  It was epidemic until last year but PSNI and PPS continue to wrongfully prosecute on direction of these insurers

As I said I had to sue them when they unlawfully cancelled my sister in law's policy.  The phone call from them was hilarious as they kept quoting parts of the Road Traffic Act 1988 at me from a script and I kept explaining back to them that the equivalent provision in either the 1981 or 1995 (Northern Ireland) orders was different and then provided them the authorities on the correct interpretation of same.  At the end of the call the young fella asked me what I did and how I knew all of that info.  When I told him his response was that it was the scariest phone call he had ever had.  They sent me a recording in discovery when my sister in law sued them

There's also a case ongoing at the minute as to whether insurance policies are being lawfully cancelled due to the different requirements under NI Law compared to England and Wales.

David if you've rewatched the game multiple times then you can't have missed the commentators talking about the pigeons.

Yes. During an AI final they were talking about pigeons. Because nothing else was happening.

They make one reference to the pigeon after the game restarts from the stoppage for clearing the pigeon.  Its not reflective of the game as a whole. Fitzmaurice at one stage called in the best final in recent memory.  Certainly it was far superior to last years affair

You can't get up from a TV match to make tay these days.
Up to 2024 you could have gone to the shop, bought a bun, came back, made they tay and then watch the last 7 or 8 minutes.

David, there might be some people who'd prefer the smell of a septic tank than a flower bed.

As I have said before im a life longer holder of minority opinions but I still prefer the old rules save for the solo and go.  Games now seem to be one team gets ahead the other comes back and the game is a battle to see can the team ahead hold on or can the team behind comeback.  Points and goals have been devalued and officiating and weather conditions play a much more significant role.  After all I think the whole thing is a matter of opinion