New rule changes unlikely to survive

You don't notice it coming around. The five-yearly playing rules review slipped through Central Council at the weekend. Proposals approved at the meeting won't take effect until the 1999-2000 season and were taken a year early in conjunction with the latest reform of the National Football League.

It can be portrayed as one of football's weaknesses that it so often has to vary both its playing rules and structures but if improvements can be made, it's better to address the fact than to leave well alone. A more fundamental reservation about the constant experimentation is whether or not it is having any long-term effect or whether it is taking place in any sort of planned continuum.

There is reassurance on these points in the integrated approach of the Football Development Committee whose agenda is fairly clear and straightforward: change the National League to a calendar year as is currently on trial in hurling and use the playing rules to enhance the importance of kicking the ball.

To take the league proposals first, there is undoubted merit in shifting it to a calendar year. The weather argument was important in relation to the hurling league but not of primary importance, given the frequently mentioned comparison between conditions in late autumn and those in early spring.

It is of less relevance in football - as the game doesn't change as radically between league and championship - but the anomaly of teams rounding off their competitive programme in the changeable weather of March, a couple of months before their often brief championship campaign gets under way and not having another serious match until conditions are again in decline is obvious.

Of greater importance is the lack of continuity in the current system. Yes it is desirable that teams can get competitive matches in as close to championship conditions as possible but it is a more pressing need that what is for the vast majority of counties the main competitive outlet observes some sort of unity of time.

Breaking for two months in mid-campaign is all very well if a team is playing 40 matches. When the average league schedule is seven matches, such a break is nonsense. What chance have teams and managers of sustaining any sort of development in such a fractured time-frame?

There are obvious objections to the introduction of a calendar year into football as well as hurling. It would threaten an overload in the springtime fixture lists and impact on clubs. In the latter regard, it has to be pointed out that inter-county activity is already creating an elite in many successful counties where clubs can often be only guaranteed their players for championship matches.

Trends within the modern game support the move. The shrinkage in the numbers of dual inter-county players and the increased flexibility about playing on days other than Sunday can be factors in spreading the burden of fixture-planning. But opposition to the move won't evaporate and it was a struggle even to gain acceptance for the minimalist progress of switching the balance of matches from four (out of seven) before Christmas to three.

The subsidiary consideration of redrawing the divisions has caused some comment. As soon as Kerry ended up in Division Three last spring, it was rumoured that the league would have to change. It has but without elevating Kerry to more familiar company.

But the new situation has its merits as did last year's - and 1992-93s - system of mixed-ability groups. For many of the less successful counties, the opportunity to play All-Ireland champions is far more of a motivation than chasing the distant prospect of one promotion spot after a campaign of attrition. Experience suggests that such teams' performances and results improve in these situations.

In relation to trials with the rules, there is an element of the gifted genius conducting experiments in the basement and occasionally trying to persuade a wider audience of their merits. There have been more ideas tried out than accepted in recent years.

Remember nine years ago and the bundle of changes proposed. Matches of four quarters and a few other ideas imported from Australian Rules which got short shrift when debated at the end of the year. The one measure that was adopted, the quick free, was to be subsequently emasculated by pedantic refereeing.

In 1994, the restriction on the hand-pass - that no player who had received one could give one - was universally unpopular, although the two teams who reached that season's league final were Donegal and Derry, sides whom you could hardly penalise more had you thought about it.

Next year's proposal to restrict the hand-pass to fisted efforts and abolish it altogether in the case of a goalkeeper is again intended to re-order football's priorities. It has already provoked a hostile response from teams who specialise in the short game and in truth, hardly any don't use the hand-pass from the goalkeeper to a defender.

The rationale behind the push to favour kicking over hand-passing is an ancient one and it is easy to sympathise with the desire to maintain one of the game's skills. But is raises a question over the purpose of the sport's administration. Is it to run the game and its competitions or to genetically engineer it.

Given that the rules currently allow football to be played in a particular way, short as well as more traditionally, why should teams be penalised because of the route they have taken?

Whereas the hand-pass could be over-used and probably was in the 1970s and '80s when it was a convenient method for Dublin and Kerry to run less fit teams ragged, it still is the style which suits a particular type of physique. Small, fast teams will still prefer to move the ball precisely rather than hoof it long and contest the drop. Is it fair to inhibit their optimum means of playing the game?

The answer is probably yes. Whereas there is no reason to alter a game's rules for purely aesthetic reasons or to promote a certain ideal of lay, there is an incentive to act if the game is suffering and the arguments that football has run into problems because of the short game are persuasive.

You can play a transfer game through short-passing but typically it holds up the ball and allows a concentration of covering players which in turn leads to fouls. Forcing a goalkeeper to kick the ball will probably create difficulties in defence but it will also keep the ball in motion.

Whatever the ultimate effect, it is unlikely that the rules will survive the experimental period and that is another of the Football Development Committee's difficulties. Their work is invariably well thought-out and rational but given the problems encountered in implementing the changes, they are accumulating an impressive data bank with little chance of application.