Changes in the GAA - super thread

Football is dead as a sport, and the GAA genuinely doesn't seem to care.

All the things that made it a great sport, midfielders contesting a kickout, long balls into the forwards, one of one battles between forward and defender are non existence it's just turned into a mindless shuffle of the ball without challenge up and down the field.It's horrible to watch (and I imagine to play) and bores me to tears.

This is a difficult thing for me to say as it was always my favourite sport and now you couldn't force me to watch a game these days.

Why the GAA have done nothing to fix it I'll never know.

They just need to bank the blanket defence tactic (by having a certain number of each team in their attacking half at all times)

Ban the short kickout (all kickouts must pass the 45)

Get rid of excessive handpassing by having 3 handpasses in a row and then the ball must be kicked forward

Reduce the number of players on a team to 13 a side.

I don't care whether people think it will be difficult to adjust to, you give teams no choice (as the rules are now changed) and they'll just have to adjust.

The fact that the GAA hasn't reacted to how bad the game has become is depressing, surely they have to see that football now features a constant din in the background of all games (similar to what you hear in baseball and cricket) because the fans are chatting and not engaged in the game.

I imagine that partly it was unworkable because they knew if they said it was unworkable it would be abandoned.Maybe it won't work but the problem is any rule changes seem to have to be approved by the managers, its been proven that they only care about results and not the game as a whole so they probably shouldn't be taken as seriously as they are.I would ague if you brought in rule changes and said, this is the way the game is now we aren't changing back teams would find a way to adjust and make the rule changes workable.

There needs to be more of a contest in the game that was always what it was about , more long kicks produces a contest for possession and uncertainty and was what people enjoyed about the game we need to find a way to get back to that in my opinion.

But again another unforeseen problem was created when long kicks were there.

Three/four players swarmed the fella trying to make the catch. Then they introduced the 'advanced mark' to stop the swarming of players. But now the advanced mark was found to have major problems. Players firing it backwards then forwards - play stopped used as a defensive tactic instead of an attacking one. Made too easy.

If Liam McHale was around now with the advanced mark he would be cleaning up in games.

I certainly agree with you that the status quo is not ok and something needs to be done to make the game more of an exciting spectacle. For me the advantages lie too much with the defense these days. Of the ideas you propose the one I personally like best is each team always having to have a minimum number of players in the attacking half. Not sure what that minimum number should be but I like that idea in principle. Another idea maybe would be once you go past a line such as the 45, the half etc you cannot pass back through it.

Personally I would say no minimum number of defenders needed. If a team wants to take risks an leaving players unmarked at the back and have more players in attack go for it. I think you would find that if a team had to keep a minimum number of players in attack then most of the time a team would leave that many back and not risk leaving attackers numbers up for a counter. No doubt late in games when losing teams would take chances but thats fine just more exciting then IMHO. Plus I also like the idea of teams not been able to go back past a line with the ball once they have crossed it with the ball.

Since GAA don't use a data provider to pull from something like a live API, they would need their own in house people manually doing it - Which is incredibly messy unless they had a big group of people at it.

Looks easy when Premier League do it on the final day etc., but that's because they have a data provider with literally 5 people assigned to each live match.

They didn't mention it once, it was brutal

Some of those rules will be too complicated to referee.

Yes to 13 players.

No to number of players in the attacking half, no to banning the short kickout, no the 3 handpasses in a row.

What you do need to do is to stop the goalkeeper coming out and making it easy to play the mindless possession game across the 45.

Higher scoring doesn't mean better games.

The problem with the modern game is there is a lack of contest for possession, as defenses retreat and allow teams to have the ball for ages and rarely will a long ball be played into the forwards.More genuine contest for possession means more excitment. The scoring is only part of the excitement.

Football video game was showcased this week. Nothing can be as shite as the ' Gaelic Games Series' on the PS2 years back

I would scrap the all stars for the championship, they are a farce, political decisions. sympathy votes, positional changes etc. Plus this is a system where Clarke can get an all star for Mayo despite conceding two goals. But an exceptional player like Mulroy for Louth will never get an all star in his lifetime.

They are always heavily weighted towards the final - the finalists get the majority of 12 spots while the runners up get less. Then there might be 3 spots for other counties.

Also the consistent players who are assumed to be good and got ones previously have to have exceptional years to get an all star - Cluxton. James McCarthy, David Clifford etc

I think a much better solution would be an all star team for each division in the league. Then they can all play in other in a round robin abroad somewhere..

Also, when taking forwards into account it’s mostly just scores.

They don’t take any other contributions into account such as chances created or frees won leading to shots etc

It’s completely outdated

That is one I forgot to say players should be voted for by the public not the journalists. Most GAA fans would give a fair call overall as to who the players should be. Voting could be charged another way to earn money for the GAA or part to charity, or various causes that affect GAA players that no longer play the game etc.

My etc was referring to examples of players.

But I find the all stars in it's current form the 'All-Stars' is a day out for the sake of it. Good players get forgotten about that play for so called weaker counties.

A four team All-Star League 'divisional' teams playing each other would be a great preseason thing instead of the McGrath cup/O'Byrne cup etc. They could have it in a round robin or something. I would watch it anyway.

What do you suggest other than snide remarks? Because the All stars has been a farce for a long time.

A false award in my view.

The GAA are looking at making the all ireland finals more of an occasion, about time too, there should be a warm up game, think an updated railway cup was suggested, maybe the provinces of the finalists in football and a team of the Munster champ vs team of Leinster(Inc. Antrim and Galway) in hurling. Need to make the 25th anniversary teams be more a part of the occasion, should be at half time in senior game, maybe invite both finalists also.