GAA column: Undue worry about negative football is for neutrals – and vanquished

It is one of the peculiarities of the GAA football championship that it tends to start with little fanfare. Yes, there have been a succession of launches in the past fortnight drawing public attention to in some cases distant fixtures and this year sees a worthy curtain-raiser in the meeting of Ulster heavyweights, Donegal and Tyrone, but overall there's no quickening of the pulse.

Unlike the league, which opens in a welter of anticipation, peaks again at the end of the divisional phase and runs quickly out of steam thereafter with vapours of indifference enveloping the actual finals, the championship opens with no guarantee of rapt attention before building steadily to the climaxes of September.

Hurling has of course already got underway but despite the earnest striving of the Leinster preliminary round-robin contestants, there is little attention paid to that level of the game.

Like a self respecting pole-vaulter, the hurling championship won't make its first run until the end of the month and the first engagement with the institution that frequently keeps the GAA going during the early weeks, the Munster championship.

Football, with its broader catchment and full national engagement, suffers from the reality that anything based on drawing teams out of a hat can’t always be fashioned into box-office appeal.

Local atmosphere

Ballybofey on Sunday is a reminder of the good and the bad of opening night in the championship. Two years ago, then All-Ireland champions Donegal’s first defence of their Ulster championship was also against Tyrone and although the weather was awful, MacCumhaill Park was packed and there was that great, local atmosphere of a big match in the provincial championship, the whole town taken over by the event.

In 2011, on the other hand, a far more tentative Donegal took the field for Jim McGuinness’s first championship match in charge. The county had been beaten at home in their previous three championship openers and were desperate to arrest the trend.

They managed to do that after a match that was sufficiently poor as a spectacle – cautiously defensive but never remotely in doubt, and also played in bad weather – to attract the opprobrium of the Sunday Game, something that gave McGuinness a cause celebre for a while that summer.

If the issue of a fitting match to begin proceedings has been addressed, the game faces other issues, reflecting concern about the direction it is taking.

There has to be a feeling though that this concern is a bit over-wrought.

Negative tactics

Football has developed a pre-occupation about negative tactics and obsessive defence, but how has this impacted on the game?

It is a fundamental misunderstanding of the game’s appeal to argue that it has a duty to provide entertainment value.

The GAA is about local loyalty and the pride of coming from somewhere that does something better than others from elsewhere, for however briefly, thus drawing attention to a community in the process.

How that’s achieved is a consideration for neutrals but that’s a constituency that has virtually no influence on the GAA. It’s also a consideration for those involved if they’re not successful, but ask Donegal if they feel compromised by the prioritising of defence on the way to the 2012 All-Ireland.

Grimaces Then ask Kerry which they liked better: the Hosannas that showered down on their All-Ireland semi-final defeat by Dublin in 2013 or the fastidious grimaces that greeted last year’s prosaic All-Ireland victory.

Anyway, how sterile has the blanket defence rendered the game? There has to be more evidence than a couple of league matches played in spring deluges.

Take a random past championship: 2004, which facilitates a 10-year comparison with last year. It was also a lively season with Westmeath winning a first provincial title and Fermanagh reaching the semi-finals for the first time.

Kerry bounced back under Jack O’Connor to reclaim the All-Ireland.

It actually registered a lower scoring aggregate (122-1592 against 138-1695) than 2014, as well a worse average (30.12 against 32.95), which doesn’t suggest that the sharpened focus on defence has had a big impact over a period when it has been to the forefront of discussions about the game.

All that can be reasonably asked of teams of amateurs going out to do the best they can is that whatever tactics are employed stay within the rules and that is a matter over which the GAA has full control.

It is still not allowed to stop your opponents by any means, fair or foul. My concerns about the championship will be directed more at how match officials uphold this principle rather than how many extra defenders are deployed by teams trying to keep their heads above water.

smoran@irishtimes.com