ONE TIME A few years back, yours truly was in a long, rambling conversation with the now head of the Expert Advisory Group, Kevin McStay.
We had moved on to the evolution of football, and he recalled an incident of yore in Mayo club football when he witnessed an extraordinary moment of a goalkeeper coming out of his well-worn patch of goalmouth to take up a marking job of the opposition full-forward on the opposition kickout – thereby freeing up his own full-back to join in the piggery as a third midfielder.
I pointed out that in recent times Stephen Cluxton had done the same when playing in Croke Park.
“Well there you go,” said McStay, almost sagging at the thought that the conversation wasn’t wrapping up any time soon, adding, “You live long enough, you see everything twice.”
Which brings us to McStay’s latest passion project of further enhancing the game of Gaelic football.
Appointed to the role by GAA President Jarlath Burns, and staffed by figures such as Conor McManus, Maurice Fitzgerald, David Coldrick and John Tobin, they are advancing a number of experiments, ranging from the housekeeping of extending the 40-metre shooting arc to the endlines, to the radical but not unheard of limitation of consecutive handpasses.
Naturally, there’s people giving out. Especially after what the majority saw as the greatest championship ever hosted, forgetting that it took radical change to get where we are at this point.
For well over a decade, the practitioners of Gaelic football were stuck in a loveless marriage with the game itself. It all felt a bit like the sleepwalking lifestyle of the middle-aged, from waking, a quick doom-scroll, the school run, work, school run, dinner, taxi runs, another doom-scroll, bed, rinse and repeat.
The new rules as advanced by Jim Gavin’s Football Review Committee added a little sauce. A cheeky getaway without the kids, unencumbered by the control that coaches had exerted on the games.
Naturally, the most controlling of coaches hated it. Some faces actually appeared to grow longer over the last two summers, dismayed and feeling a little sorry for themselves.
But ask yourself this: would Mayo’s stunning All-Ireland win have happened if it weren’t for a sea change towards adventure?
It also means that the rest of them have to shed their Amish tendencies and coach their players to show off the very best skills of the game. The game is now a joy.
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That’s not to say it is the finished product. When Gavin was starting with the blank page of re-imagining Gaelic football, he prepared a dossier of other sports and the changes they made to make things more palatable.
For example, it was 47 years ago when basketball introduced the three-point shooting line. Nowadays, the top 10 three-point shooters are still active: Stephen Curry, James Harden, Klay Thompson, Damian Lillard, LeBron James, Paul George and Kevin Durant.
The others, Ray Allen, Reggie Miller and Kyle Korver are still in recent memory.
The point is that players adapted and got better and better at shooting from distance. As neat and tidy as Curry’s play at point guard is, he is a little on the small side at 6ft 2in to have the same impact without that weapon of his backward step and shot over a block.
Stephen Curry celebrates. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
It would be insanity now for the NBA to abolish the three-point line. The same applies to the GAA. The two-point shot has become essential. It skews previous scoring records. Big deal.
The proposed alterations of McStay’s group, to be trialled in the Ryan Cup, include some ideas that appear to be certainties, others rooted in common sense and some that might have been thrown in as a grenade for debate.
McStay doesn’t need any more friends and he’s no people-pleaser, as he told Colm Parkinson on his podcast: “A little bit of polishing, a little bit of tweaking, do no harm would be the overriding sense of it… It’s not earth-shattering but some of it is of its time, and it needs to be tried.
“One of the lovely things about a trial is it’s a trial. You don’t have to do it.”
Extending the arc inside the 20-metre line and down to the endline makes a lot of sense. It will facilitate shots that were previously ruled as high-risk, for one point. There is no downside. Imagine if Jack McCarron’s now historic sideline was a few yards narrower, over the 20-metre mark and therefore meant nothing?
Upping the value of a goal to four points is worth another look. The first time the general public got a look at the FRC Rule proposals was in the 2024 Interprovincial series.
Those games were played under new rules but with an old mentality. A couple of goals flying in felt like the gap opening up was too great.
However, once the rules were adopted, it became routine for teams to hunt down eight, nine, ten point deficits. The momentum shift of the two-point score became a huge effect on the game. So it will be interesting to see that one given another spin in this light.
As for the others, let’s have a quick look.
The ban on fisted points will feel personal for Armagh, and Jarly Óg Burns in particular might feel his ears burning. It’s hard to work up any hate for another method of scoring when you are crowded out in a congested area and the odd thing for McStay’s assessment of it as a ‘low skill’, David Clifford does it more than anyone.
Six subs rather than five just makes sense, with nothing more to be said about it.
The ‘backcourt’ rule, whereby you cannot cross back into your own half after crossing the halfway line will encourage aggressive tackling and could put an end to the concept of building a ‘slow’ attack. A good thing. G’wan Kevin.
A 50-metre advancement if a mark is impeded feels too much. The catching player already has possession, can do a solo and go and cannot be touched for a set period of time. It feels like one of those rules too open to exploitation.
Kickouts to travel just 13 metres rather than outside the arc feels like a licence to normalise short kickouts. Not sure on that one.
The final one is the most thorny: limiting handpasses. After every three handpasses, the ball has to be played by foot.
This was of course trialled in the pre-season competitions of 2019, and dropped after howls of protest. The GPA conducted their own survey that met with a 90% disapproval rating from their membership.
It was also tried out in the 1994-95 league, abandoned because it just became too messy. In this era, players would simply retain possession by a short kickpass. Whatever the problem is, this isn’t going to fix it.
Kevin McStay is right. Live long enough and you see everything twice. Sometimes three times. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth having another crack at it.
Perhaps the next evolution of the game is how Colm Nally described it on these webpages not so long ago – the relieving kick out into space that suddenly creates goal chances from nothing. Like the finish of the All-Ireland final.
Perhaps that might be adopted by some of the coaching fraternity and the handpass blight will be phased out. Doubt it. But we’d be willing to try anything for the sheer hell of it, and the Ryan Cup is the most suitable place to start.
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A few nips and tucks, and a conversational grenade: give McStay's rules a chance
ONE TIME A few years back, yours truly was in a long, rambling conversation with the now head of the Expert Advisory Group, Kevin McStay.
We had moved on to the evolution of football, and he recalled an incident of yore in Mayo club football when he witnessed an extraordinary moment of a goalkeeper coming out of his well-worn patch of goalmouth to take up a marking job of the opposition full-forward on the opposition kickout – thereby freeing up his own full-back to join in the piggery as a third midfielder.
I pointed out that in recent times Stephen Cluxton had done the same when playing in Croke Park.
“Well there you go,” said McStay, almost sagging at the thought that the conversation wasn’t wrapping up any time soon, adding, “You live long enough, you see everything twice.”
Which brings us to McStay’s latest passion project of further enhancing the game of Gaelic football.
Appointed to the role by GAA President Jarlath Burns, and staffed by figures such as Conor McManus, Maurice Fitzgerald, David Coldrick and John Tobin, they are advancing a number of experiments, ranging from the housekeeping of extending the 40-metre shooting arc to the endlines, to the radical but not unheard of limitation of consecutive handpasses.
Naturally, there’s people giving out. Especially after what the majority saw as the greatest championship ever hosted, forgetting that it took radical change to get where we are at this point.
For well over a decade, the practitioners of Gaelic football were stuck in a loveless marriage with the game itself. It all felt a bit like the sleepwalking lifestyle of the middle-aged, from waking, a quick doom-scroll, the school run, work, school run, dinner, taxi runs, another doom-scroll, bed, rinse and repeat.
The new rules as advanced by Jim Gavin’s Football Review Committee added a little sauce. A cheeky getaway without the kids, unencumbered by the control that coaches had exerted on the games.
Naturally, the most controlling of coaches hated it. Some faces actually appeared to grow longer over the last two summers, dismayed and feeling a little sorry for themselves.
But ask yourself this: would Mayo’s stunning All-Ireland win have happened if it weren’t for a sea change towards adventure?
It also means that the rest of them have to shed their Amish tendencies and coach their players to show off the very best skills of the game. The game is now a joy.
That’s not to say it is the finished product. When Gavin was starting with the blank page of re-imagining Gaelic football, he prepared a dossier of other sports and the changes they made to make things more palatable.
For example, it was 47 years ago when basketball introduced the three-point shooting line. Nowadays, the top 10 three-point shooters are still active: Stephen Curry, James Harden, Klay Thompson, Damian Lillard, LeBron James, Paul George and Kevin Durant.
The others, Ray Allen, Reggie Miller and Kyle Korver are still in recent memory.
The point is that players adapted and got better and better at shooting from distance. As neat and tidy as Curry’s play at point guard is, he is a little on the small side at 6ft 2in to have the same impact without that weapon of his backward step and shot over a block.
It would be insanity now for the NBA to abolish the three-point line. The same applies to the GAA. The two-point shot has become essential. It skews previous scoring records. Big deal.
The proposed alterations of McStay’s group, to be trialled in the Ryan Cup, include some ideas that appear to be certainties, others rooted in common sense and some that might have been thrown in as a grenade for debate.
McStay doesn’t need any more friends and he’s no people-pleaser, as he told Colm Parkinson on his podcast: “A little bit of polishing, a little bit of tweaking, do no harm would be the overriding sense of it… It’s not earth-shattering but some of it is of its time, and it needs to be tried.
“One of the lovely things about a trial is it’s a trial. You don’t have to do it.”
Extending the arc inside the 20-metre line and down to the endline makes a lot of sense. It will facilitate shots that were previously ruled as high-risk, for one point. There is no downside. Imagine if Jack McCarron’s now historic sideline was a few yards narrower, over the 20-metre mark and therefore meant nothing?
Upping the value of a goal to four points is worth another look. The first time the general public got a look at the FRC Rule proposals was in the 2024 Interprovincial series.
Those games were played under new rules but with an old mentality. A couple of goals flying in felt like the gap opening up was too great.
However, once the rules were adopted, it became routine for teams to hunt down eight, nine, ten point deficits. The momentum shift of the two-point score became a huge effect on the game. So it will be interesting to see that one given another spin in this light.
As for the others, let’s have a quick look.
The ban on fisted points will feel personal for Armagh, and Jarly Óg Burns in particular might feel his ears burning. It’s hard to work up any hate for another method of scoring when you are crowded out in a congested area and the odd thing for McStay’s assessment of it as a ‘low skill’, David Clifford does it more than anyone.
Six subs rather than five just makes sense, with nothing more to be said about it.
The ‘backcourt’ rule, whereby you cannot cross back into your own half after crossing the halfway line will encourage aggressive tackling and could put an end to the concept of building a ‘slow’ attack. A good thing. G’wan Kevin.
A 50-metre advancement if a mark is impeded feels too much. The catching player already has possession, can do a solo and go and cannot be touched for a set period of time. It feels like one of those rules too open to exploitation.
Kickouts to travel just 13 metres rather than outside the arc feels like a licence to normalise short kickouts. Not sure on that one.
The final one is the most thorny: limiting handpasses. After every three handpasses, the ball has to be played by foot.
This was of course trialled in the pre-season competitions of 2019, and dropped after howls of protest. The GPA conducted their own survey that met with a 90% disapproval rating from their membership.
It was also tried out in the 1994-95 league, abandoned because it just became too messy. In this era, players would simply retain possession by a short kickpass. Whatever the problem is, this isn’t going to fix it.
Kevin McStay is right. Live long enough and you see everything twice. Sometimes three times. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth having another crack at it.
Perhaps the next evolution of the game is how Colm Nally described it on these webpages not so long ago – the relieving kick out into space that suddenly creates goal chances from nothing. Like the finish of the All-Ireland final.
Perhaps that might be adopted by some of the coaching fraternity and the handpass blight will be phased out. Doubt it. But we’d be willing to try anything for the sheer hell of it, and the Ryan Cup is the most suitable place to start.
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column experimentation GAA Gaelic Football Rule Changes