In a couple of weeks, the stylings of the Football Review Committee will play to their first mass audience when the interprovincial matches at Croke Park are played under the proposed new rules.
It’s a timely exposition, 40 years to the month since another experiment was launched on Jones’s Road, also holding out the prospect of improving football and creating greater enjoyment for spectators and players.
During the GAA’s Centenary Year in 1984, it was finally decided to proceed with an international football series to be contested between Gaelic footballers and Australian Rules players. There had been cross-cultural engagement between county teams and invitational sides in the previous two decades but this was the first official series.
A detailed report had been drawn up by the GAA the previous year. Chaired by Armagh’s Gerry Fagan, the special committee on ‘Australian Rules Football and the GAA’ had reported in May 1983.
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One of the putative benefits of the relationship was stated at 2.4: “There could be a profitable cross-fertilisation of ideas by contact between the two codes.”
Gaelic football fared better in the exchange of ideas. The quick free from the hands extended to line-balls and is now part of the GAA repertoire.
It wasn’t just on-field that the internationals had an influence. Former Cork secretary Frank Murphy helped to draft the rules for the composite game and refereed the first international test in October 1984.
He travelled privately for the 1986 series and was invited to chair the disciplinary tribunal, whose procedures so impressed him that he would be involved in recommending similar structures for the GAA in the years to come.
But it wasn’t entirely one-way traffic.
Former Australia coach Mick Malthouse coined the phrase, ‘the Gaelicisation” of the AFL, as a comment on the changing emphasis within the Australian game and the influx of Irish players. In an interview with The Irish Times in 2010, he said that it was a natural process of evolution.
“The connection with Gaelic football is another method of us advancing our game. Too many people think our game is complete – that’s it! That’s the death of any sport, of anything. You’ve to keep expanding and looking outside.”
There has been some speculation about a revival of the international series, which won’t have been played for eight years by the time 2025 rolls along but with the revised calendar in Ireland and the increase in competitor clubs in the AFL, it is difficult to see how it could be feasible.
Forty years on from that first series, Croke Park will host a temporary revival of the interprovincial series as Connacht, Leinster, Munster and Ulster play off in the first major viewing of the proposed new rules.
Jim Gavin’s FRC is acutely aware that they have been conducting the ‘sandbox’ games in the absence of any significant pushback. Initial reactions have been very positive with a discernible improvement in the flow of matches and the committee has been racking its brains to anticipate criticism and unintended consequences.
There is also apprehension at the procedural fences that will have to be jumped at next month’s special congress – in the absence of any identifiable opposition. Given the number of proposals going to the floor, that anxiety is justified. If delegates get confused, precedent suggests that they will develop negative feelings about the whole project or start cherry-picking.
In the FRC’s favour, however, is the near consensus that something needs to be done about football. That may influence the mood of congress to be bold in assessing solutions.
One of the surprises that has arisen anecdotally is the lack of action on what many see as the scourge of the handpass – a topic on which the GAA has been keeping a close eye for a long time.
The ratio of hand- to kick-passing had risen from 1:1 in the 1970s to 1.8:1 in 2000 and 2.3:1 in 2010 but during the latter stages of the 2012 All-Ireland championship the ratio dipped to 2.1:1.
Chair of the 2012 FRC, the late Eugene McGee, warned that were the ratio to stretch to 4:1 or 5:1 the GAA would be obliged to act.
Rob Carroll’s ‘Statistical Analysis Report – Football 2024,’ published in August, suggests that the ratio, more or less stable since 2016, ranging between 3.1:1 and 3.5:1 – still within McGee’s red line – may be rising again. This year’s ratio, 3.4:1, is the second largest since the high-water mark was reached in 2018.
The current FRC did look at addressing this early on but felt that restrictions on the handpass may have an unintended consequence for the attacking team close to the opponent’s goal. Furthermore, the feedback from intercounty referees was that a limitation of consecutive passes would be problematic from an implementation perspective.
This prompted one fundamentalist to exclaim: “What – they can’t count to one!”
There is also an understanding that the proposals can’t really be fully evaluated until they are up and running in league and championship. There won’t even be preseason tournaments to test drive the new rules.
A leap of faith will be required to some extent and so the Croke Park matches will have a critical influence on the prevailing mood towards the changes.
Gavin’s committee could do with the missionary zeal of Dr Allen Aylett, president on the NFL Australia, when rhapsodising about the third test of the 1984 series.
“From what we’ve seen here today I’m certain that in this new game we’ve got a space-age spectacular.
“There are five established major football games in the world but this is twice as fast as any of them. I enjoyed this as much as any match I’ve seen for a long time.”
