But from this vantage point in Croke Park for the All-Ireland football final last July, the close of the first half was utter theatre.
By and large, Paudie Clifford had the ball at the base of the Kerry attack. With the help of others, they were whiling away the seconds until the hooter would sound for half-time, before getting down to business.
Everyone’s attention was flickering between where the ball was, and where David Clifford, marked by Brendan McCole, was.
Paudie was giving the ball to his brother, no question. And it was going to create a two-point chance, again, no question.
And David made his burst, he wriggled free of McCole, got into space, was fed the ball, kicked the two-pointer, and sent the Kerry fans delirious.
Kerry run the clock down to the hooter and then find David Clifford for a two-pointer.
An exclamation mark to the end of a half. A game within a game.
And it wasn’t just mise that felt it and thought it.
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“I prefer it the way it was last year, definitely,” said former Dublin multiple All-Ireland winner John Small, when we talked on Monday.
“I like to see a team having the ball for the last play and having to work a score. It’s what we practise so much in training, conditioned games like that. You work on plays where there is just 90 seconds left and you need to create a two-pointer.
“I just thought it was a really exciting part of the game and don’t like it finishing bang on 70 minutes.”
Others thought differently.
The final document and waving through of the Football Review Committee’s findings and proposals was such a big story in itself, followed by the dramatic exit one day later of Jim Gavin from the Irish Presidential race, that a few trifling details got lost in the mix.
One of them was the alteration of the hooter, to just stop dead on the 35 and 70 minute marks.
This caught people unawares. Many floating fans that had enough sense to stay close to the Superser with all four bars blazing rather than venture out to the pre-season games, found games with jarring conclusions as the league commenced.
And sure as hard cases make bad law, the first stress test arrived in Fitzgerald Stadium yesterday, when Sean O’Shea leathered in a long ball to Tomás Kennedy who fielded and fisted over just the right side of the hooter ending, to deny Roscommon a point away to Kerry.
Eamonn Fitzmaurice has become to Jim Gavin what Jarlath Burns was for Paraic Duffy at a time; an authoritative voice who will fight the corner of the Football Review Committee.
Over the weekend it felt like he was being wheeled out to deliver the case for the defence in print in the Irish Examiner and on the league highlights show on RTÉ last night, when there was an autopsy of Kennedy’s late point.
“The ball barely left his hand when the hooter sounded. Kerry got the benefit of the doubt today,” he reasoned.
“Technically, it was the correct call but I wouldn’t have been surprised if the free had gone the other way in the first place.”
Show host Joanne Cantwell pushed him on the decision to change the rules around the hooter.
“Did you listen to outside noise?” she asked.
“We felt there was a body of evidence there that it worked,” he said in response.
Vague enough, to be fair.
Then, when you thought the man would have just wanted to get the feet up on his desk with a nice mug of joe ahead of a frantic school week, there he was on Monday morning, on the blower to Darren Frehill of RTÉ Radio, still having to make the case for the defence.
Maybe we still get a helter-skelter finish to games. Killarney showed us that.
But the way it operated in 2025 was not without its’ charms. The notion that a final sequence of play, unlimited in time, would encourage laboured build-up seems to have been confused by what could happen in the rest of the game, when players would deliberately slow a game down.
The post-hooter final sequence of the game was different. If a team was leading, then the ball was going straight out over the sideline. If they were trailing and had the chance of squaring the game up or winning, then there was a purpose and an end result.
On balance, the new rules have made the sport more exciting. It has also stripped out a great deal of strategy in the game. The kickout now is largely a contested spectacle, a goalkeeper lamping it to either wing and trying to outnumber opponents, hoping against hope they can read a break.
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The post-hooter final play was a strategy you could get your teeth into.
We saw it have an effect in 21 matches in the All-Ireland series last summer, seven scores coming after the final hooter, 14 after the half-time break was signalled.
Fluff it and the game was over. Finish it off and glory was yours.
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Change to hooter rule has seen Gaelic football end game lose something
PERHAPS IT IS a matter of personal taste.
But from this vantage point in Croke Park for the All-Ireland football final last July, the close of the first half was utter theatre.
By and large, Paudie Clifford had the ball at the base of the Kerry attack. With the help of others, they were whiling away the seconds until the hooter would sound for half-time, before getting down to business.
Everyone’s attention was flickering between where the ball was, and where David Clifford, marked by Brendan McCole, was.
Paudie was giving the ball to his brother, no question. And it was going to create a two-point chance, again, no question.
And David made his burst, he wriggled free of McCole, got into space, was fed the ball, kicked the two-pointer, and sent the Kerry fans delirious.
An exclamation mark to the end of a half. A game within a game.
And it wasn’t just mise that felt it and thought it.
“I prefer it the way it was last year, definitely,” said former Dublin multiple All-Ireland winner John Small, when we talked on Monday.
“I like to see a team having the ball for the last play and having to work a score. It’s what we practise so much in training, conditioned games like that. You work on plays where there is just 90 seconds left and you need to create a two-pointer.
“I just thought it was a really exciting part of the game and don’t like it finishing bang on 70 minutes.”
Others thought differently.
The final document and waving through of the Football Review Committee’s findings and proposals was such a big story in itself, followed by the dramatic exit one day later of Jim Gavin from the Irish Presidential race, that a few trifling details got lost in the mix.
One of them was the alteration of the hooter, to just stop dead on the 35 and 70 minute marks.
This caught people unawares. Many floating fans that had enough sense to stay close to the Superser with all four bars blazing rather than venture out to the pre-season games, found games with jarring conclusions as the league commenced.
And sure as hard cases make bad law, the first stress test arrived in Fitzgerald Stadium yesterday, when Sean O’Shea leathered in a long ball to Tomás Kennedy who fielded and fisted over just the right side of the hooter ending, to deny Roscommon a point away to Kerry.
Eamonn Fitzmaurice has become to Jim Gavin what Jarlath Burns was for Paraic Duffy at a time; an authoritative voice who will fight the corner of the Football Review Committee.
Over the weekend it felt like he was being wheeled out to deliver the case for the defence in print in the Irish Examiner and on the league highlights show on RTÉ last night, when there was an autopsy of Kennedy’s late point.
“The ball barely left his hand when the hooter sounded. Kerry got the benefit of the doubt today,” he reasoned.
“Technically, it was the correct call but I wouldn’t have been surprised if the free had gone the other way in the first place.”
Show host Joanne Cantwell pushed him on the decision to change the rules around the hooter.
“Did you listen to outside noise?” she asked.
“We felt there was a body of evidence there that it worked,” he said in response.
Vague enough, to be fair.
Maybe we still get a helter-skelter finish to games. Killarney showed us that.
But the way it operated in 2025 was not without its’ charms. The notion that a final sequence of play, unlimited in time, would encourage laboured build-up seems to have been confused by what could happen in the rest of the game, when players would deliberately slow a game down.
The post-hooter final sequence of the game was different. If a team was leading, then the ball was going straight out over the sideline. If they were trailing and had the chance of squaring the game up or winning, then there was a purpose and an end result.
On balance, the new rules have made the sport more exciting. It has also stripped out a great deal of strategy in the game. The kickout now is largely a contested spectacle, a goalkeeper lamping it to either wing and trying to outnumber opponents, hoping against hope they can read a break.
The post-hooter final play was a strategy you could get your teeth into.
We saw it have an effect in 21 matches in the All-Ireland series last summer, seven scores coming after the final hooter, 14 after the half-time break was signalled.
Fluff it and the game was over. Finish it off and glory was yours.
It’s not entirely gone, but it’s diminished now.
*****
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Gaelic Football hooters Kerry QUESTION OF TIMING