There has seldom been so much talk about such a poor match as there has been about the Meath/Armagh All-Ireland football semi-final. Criticism of the match itself, of the players, the tactics, the referee and even the linesmen has been widespread.
Most of the problems which arose in last Sunday's match stemmed from the overcrowding in the middle of the field. Twice during the second half when Armagh needed scores they had only two players up in their attack, and some of their most talented forwards were behind the halfway line. is na Gaeilge TnaG footage of some of the old matches matches showed they were not all that great either.
Although the big attendances at games in recent seasons demonstrate that interest levels in the game are high, the GAA has acknowledged that all is not well with Gaelic football.
A Football Development Committee is sitting at present and is expected to report later this month. The committee consists of Noel Walsh from Clare (the chairman), Pat Daly of Croke Park, Pat O'Neill, the former Dublin player and manager, Colm O'Rourke of Meath, Eugene McGee, the journalist and former All-Ireland-winning manager of Offaly, and Martin Carney, who has played for both Donegal and Mayo.
Walsh dislikes any attempt to blame referees for a perceived decline of the game. "Refereeing is not an exact science," he said. "Several experiments with the rules have been made on an experimental basis but it is difficult to get changes through.
"The report of the Development Committee will be making some radical suggestions but playing rule changes are not included. Last Sunday's match has caused a bit of an uproar but there was very little between that and the Cork/ Mayo semi-final the previous Sunday.
"I believe 46 frees were awarded but there have been many matches in which far more were awarded. I remember an Ulster final some years ago when there were more than 80 frees in the match.
"There has been a lot of criticism of referees but I have never seen a referee commit a foul. Everyone was delighted with last year's All-Ireland final between Galway and Kildare but we tend to forget these things very quickly.
"One problem we have with football is that we tend to compare it with the purity of hurling, where players have both hands on the hurley. In football things are different.
"What we have to do is to restore the primacy of catching and kicking. Foot passing is a great skill and yet few players seem to practise it. The modern game has a lot of hand-passing designed to retain possession but last Sunday many of these passes went astray because of the close marking in midfield.
"Many players nowadays seem to believe that fouling is a legitimate tactic to slow the game down, and we see many instances of players protesting to the referee when he gives a free for what are obvious personal fouls on the player in possession.
"I would be willing to give the `mark' as in the Australian game a decent trial. We did try it a couple of years ago but it wasn't taken seriously. A fine high catch nowadays frequently gets the catcher into trouble when he is buffetted and prevented from playing the ball and often he is penalised for over-holding. I would not rule it out but it would have to be a genuine effort. "The introduction of the Australian tackle might cause more problems than it would solve. I don't think our players would take too kindly to it. We have taken the sideline kick and the quick free out of the hands from the Australian game and we seem to have adapted well.
"There are inherent flaws in the game as we know it and we probably look at the past through rose-tinted spectacles. The old game might not have been as great as we are led to believe. Another thing which seems strange to me in recent times is that very few prominent intercounty players are taking up refereeing.
"In the past great players like Simon Deignan, Con Murphy, Mick Higgins, Peter McDremott and John Dunne all took up the whistle after playing days. Mickey Kearins of Sligo seems to be the last player of that calibre to take the whistle." One of the most outspoken critics of Sunday's match has been Eugene McGee, a columnist with the Irish Independent. He started his column last Monday with the comment: "This was an atrocious game of Gaelic football, one of the worst All-Ireland semi-finals in the past 25 years."
McGee elaborated on this in an interview, saying that he believes that players, team managers and coaches are not concentrating enough on the three crucial elements of the game, kicking accurately, catching and scoring.
"If you take golf, for instance, players spend hours on their putting. In tennis players spend hours practising their serve. I very much doubt if modern Gaelic players spend much time practising the skills of the game, such as kicking the ball accurately. Most of the kicking is abysmal.
"Some of the football we saw on Sunday would remind you of what you might see in a junior schools game, with everyone chasing madly after the ball.
"Many managers now seem to be concentrating on getting as many players as possible behind the ball. The last 15 or 20 minutes was ludicrous. For instance Diarmuid Marsden was away back in his own half of the field when he should have been putting pressure on Meath up front. "There were several quality players on both sides, yet the skill level was dire. It looked even worse on television. It seemed to me that both sides adopted a negative approach with nine or 10 competing for the ball in the middle of the field.
"Outstanding players like Trevor Giles found themselves surrounded whenever they got the ball. The result was that, by Giles's standards, he had a disappointing match. The same is true of John McDermott and Jarlath Burns, although McDermott managed to have a good match in spite of everything.
"Both teams were hunting in packs. It is very hard to legislate for this kind of thing. A negative approach to the game has been widely adopted," he concluded. Pat O'Neill agrees with McGee's assessment. "It seems to me that players are no longer willing to practise the basics of the game. When players are selected for the county they think they don't have to practise the basic skills any more. The emphasis now is on physical fitness and mobility, with skill left behind.
"Quite honestly when I left Croke Park on Sunday I wasn't all that disappointed. I though that a lot of effort had been put into the match by both sides. I though it was better match all round that the previous Sunday between Cork and Mayo, which was very flat.
"Even so I accept that the match was tactically strangled. The experimental rules which were introduced in recent years never really got a decent trial."
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