When the Football Review Committee (FRC) was finalising its proposals for special congress in late 2024, there was some contention as to whether the new dispensation should apply at club level.
There were plausible arguments either way. The basic opposition line went something like: get the rules snag-listed and ironed out before releasing them into the comparative wilds of the club game.
The matter was emphatically decided by the committee on the simple grounds that it would be unfair to deny any player the enhanced enjoyment of experiencing the new football.
Eamonn Fitzmaurice, the former Kerry manager who was a member of the FRC, previously said: “We had a lot of discussions as a committee on that and what we came to at the end is that we want them to come in for the club game.
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“One of the big games for Kerry in the National League next year (2025) will be Armagh coming down in March to play on a Saturday night.
“You’ll have a lot of club players attending that game. But then the next day you could have a scenario where those same lads are going out playing a club game and they are encountering 15 players behind the ball and so they are not getting a chance to experience what they watched the night before.”
That argument resounded triumphantly around Croke Park on Sunday when the club football final delivered another cliffhanger finale. It was the sixth in succession that featured either one-point winners or striking comebacks.
If the excitement of the Dingle v St Brigid’s contest can’t be solely ascribed to the new rules given the fixture’s recent history, they certainly played a role in the high quality of the football.
The Kerry champions had won Munster with a late, late two-point free and outscored Ballyboden by kicking more two-pointers than their opponents.
Dingle could argue that they were dragged into extra-time in the final by Ruaidhrí Fallon’s exceptional two-pointer for St Brigid’s. Yet, without the value of the enhanced score, they would have been trailing at that point.
Of course, we cannot inhabit parallel universes where the season was played out under the previous rules. But there is an irrefutable argument that at the very least, the introduction of the new scoring system has played a major part in the quality of the club championship.
Dingle’s tightrope walk from Kerry to Croke Park, through Cork, has at times defied gravity and often exhilarated.
There have been late deliverances in matches, soaring two-point scores and a last-minute winner kicked by Mikey Geaney on Sunday. At least as influential was the additional space under the FRC rules allowing free rein to Dingle’s natural kickers, capable of isolating forwards in the top half of the field and exploiting one-on-one matchups.
They may be from football’s dominant county but without doubt, they have also paid their dues. They have endured soul-destroying defeats in the county as well as in the Munster final two seasons ago when, as replacements for divisional side East Kerry, they led almost from gun to tape only to be forced into extra time and eventually, a penalty shoot-out, which they lost to Castlehaven.
Heading into the second season of the rules, some feel a sense of trepidation about how the new dispensation might be nullified or undermined by tactical responses from managers and coaches.
There was one notable exchange that raised an ongoing issue. In the 39th minute of Sunday’s match, Fallon got in for a goal and momentum in the contest looked to have shifted. However, within three minutes, Dylan Geaney had landed a two-pointer in response. A three-point lead was cut to the minimum. It prompted some reflection on the relative values of the two scores.
Originally, as a counterweight to the two-pointer, the FRC proposed raising the value of a goal to four points. In perhaps the committee’s most hastily taken decision, the four-point goal was dropped on the evidence of the interprovincial trial matches in October 2024.
This may well have been simply a matter of scheduling. Initial impressions last. The first trial match saw Connacht hand a poor Leinster side a trimming, outscoring them by 25, reflected in four four-point goals and five two-pointers.
The imbalance triggered a bout of queasiness that the scoring system was partly to blame – for a short while, there was even a question mark over the future of the two-pointers. That one-sided interprovincial would still have been won by 16, instead of 25, had old values applied.
Before the final agenda went to special congress, however, the goal was restored to three points. This was despite a strong view within the FRC that uncompetitive fixtures were far more to blame for lopsided scorelines.
Ultimately, another calculation was that revising upwards the value of a goal would feed objections that a different – rather than an enhanced – game was being created.
Concerns about the differential between green and orange flags would persist during last season and the idea of a four-point goal will be reviewed again at the end of this year’s championship.
Counter-intuitively, the two-pointer has played a role in keeping matches closer, rather than being used predominantly by superior teams to inflict punishment beatings.
Instead, the new score has been frequently deployed to cut gaps and prevent deficits from getting out of hand. It’s easy to understand why. A team in the lead is less likely to speculate whereas players chasing a match are more likely to feel the need to take some chances.
Far from struggling to adapt, club footballers have proved every bit as liberated as the intercounty peers.
sean.moran@irishtimes.com
