Why wont die hard GAA fans admit football these days is muck?

Football is great. League is miles ahead of Hurling this time of year.

Throw all 16 league games that were played at the weekend and it would compare favorably to 16 games in other sports I would imagine.

Is that why you walked away from it Jimmy? 😁

One thing I'd like to see trialled in an early year competition in 2024 is no backwards or sideways handpassing until you get within a certain distance of the opposition goal ( either the 21 or 45), the lateral handpassing around midfield is a big momentum killer in games.

What about the 15 bodies behind the ball? Teams seldom kick ball in with 3/ 4 lads sweeping on front of FB line.

Yes agree there, and don’t want to shift the thread away from football but is there anything more boring than a hurling game with scores of 1.28 to 18 pts and most of them frees?

Both games need a good honest revamp in my opinion.

I expected a lot more from the current Ard Stiurihore regarding innovation and pragmatism, but it didn’t happen.

ALet's just go crazy altogether...

Once you cross a line you cannot go back across it, that's all lines from your own 14 all the way to the opposite 14

90%+ of the time a forward will be shooting from within 40m. When there is someone else on the field with the ability to kick accurately from distance why is there an issue when its not a forward. Whether the number 15 or number 1 kicks a free from 50 metres, its still worth 1 point.

Hurling's problem is its become too easy to score. Puck out, hand pass, score from 80m; puck out, hand pass, score from 65m, rinse and repeat all day. 0-35 to 0-33, how exciting.

1992 all Ireland hurling final 3-10 to 1-12. Savage game. 2003 - 1-14 to 1-11. No one can say they weren't great Kilkenny and Cork teams because there weren't 60 scores.

Absolutely spot on.

Even average teams can rack up 20-25 points a game at inter-county level. When you add in wides and sidelines along with scores, there may be up to 100 times a game when the ball goes dead. You'd have to wonder how much hurling is actually done in a game of hurling. Add in the throw replacing the handpass (I'd say 90% throw at this stage), the steps rule being ignored, lads holding the ball going into tackles with the head down, the repeated third man interference leading to rucks, the possession game and ignoring the rules by all and sundry has seen hurling abandon a lot of the organised chaos that makes it so great. The quality of skill as the highest level is so good that sport gets away with it somewhat, but it's becoming a more boring sport to watch by the month.

Club hurling is actually a better watch, the lower standard means you see more mistakes and consequently, a lot of plans go out the window regularly and the teams just go at each other.

If given a free reign to make changes to hurling, I'd 1) remove the handpass form the same hand to remove the throw from the game, 2) add 10% weight to the sliothar and a slightly longer rim, 3) all puckouts have to go past your own 45, 4) no subs after the 30/35 minute mark of each half, 5) hurls have to be regulation size and measured when taking to the field (some sort of device to be designed to prevent bigger hurls) and 6) if a player goes down with an injury, he has to leave the field for treatment, and can't return until the following play (or second play if the next play is a free) has been completed (this ensure a genuine injury is treated, and someone faking an injury leaves the field)

I reckon a lot of those rules would put a bit more organised chaos back into the game, a bit more honesty, and make scoring a little more difficult.

At least you can say with the football lads, they're at least trying out things like the advanced mark and having proper discussions over the way the game is played for a while now. There's a massive dearth of leadership along the same lines within hurling to even address it's issues, it's all swept under the rug of "it's the greatest sport in the world".

God be with the days when a lad would let fly with a ground stroke, ala Adrian Fenlon or Fenton's wonderstrike. Was an art in itself. You rarely, if ever, see ground hurling anymore, all rucks for the ball, followed either by a throw in or one team managing to gain possession and proceed to hand pass it around before a robot swings over from the next parish.

I think in gaelic football, all kick-outs must go beyond your own 45, and only the four designated midfielders are allowed contest it in that zone. The art of high catching might become valued again. No passing backwards once you cross the opposition 45 either- should be easy to implement at all levels, unlike some of the vagrancies of the advanced mark where a few refs still can't judge if it's travelled the required distance.

I'd also like to see something implemented where the defending team can't have any more than one extra player than the attacking team inside their '45 (either all game or in last 10 mins). Might lead to more creative thinking than the current plus twos or threes, or wing-forwards playing as auxillary backs.

Then again, the GAA is governed by fear. The top brass afraid to make tough calls so hide behind myriad of committees, and county teams now afraid to do the godawful thing of losing possession in a game (which has filtered down to clubs). You'd swear it was big-money professional sport with livelihoods at stake.

It's all just too....serious nowadays.

Good post there..that would be a start.

Also another big thing which has sprung up is bringing the ball into the tackle.

Gaa need to emphasise more that the onus should be more on the ball carrier to get rid of the ball before the tackle.

You see forwards tip tapping the ball a metre front the defender then try a burst of speed to get by.

Usually results in a drag down and a free for the forward.

So your perception is that teams retain possession at the expense of going for a score.

So based on that you would expect less scoring in the modern game.

So I did some analysis.

I took all 40 provincial finals from the old days, 1980 to 1989 and compared them to the finals from 2010 to 2019 in both the average total score and the average number of scores.

I took 2010 to 2019 because we were well into the era of possession football, blanket defenses, swarm defence, keepers taking frees, sweepers etc at that stage.

So in the old days the average total score of a provincial final was 26.87 points, and the average number of scores was 22.9

In the 2010 to 2019 the average socre was 33.2 points and the average number of scores was 29.1.

So contrary to the belief that teams are holding possession at the expense of going for scores they are actually scoring more in my sample.

Correct, they tend not to take a shot unless they are almost assured of the score, that is a fact.

Boring as hell.

Yea, if one could compare the shots v wides/scores data that would be interesting.

But the reality is games have more scores and people like scores.