Coulter calls on GAA to try 13-a-side game

NEWS:DOWN FORWARD Benny Coulter has suggested the GAA consider 13-a-side football as a way of addressing the sort of blanket defence which he says is destroying the natural flow of the game.

Although last Sunday’s round of championship matches actually produced some fine football, Coulter still fears the lack of attacking play is turning forwards like himself off the game.

Down play their Ulster semi-final against Tyrone on Saturday week and Coulter is predicting something of a defence-fest: “Tyrone drop men back,” he says. “Even ourselves this year, we are starting to play with eight or nine defenders too.

“I’m hoping it will be a free-flowing game. But Ulster championship games aren’t like that. That’s just the way the game is gone nowadays and I think that is the way it will probably go against Tyrone as well, both teams sitting men back.”

Coulter was in Dublin yesterday to receive his Opel GPA footballer of the month award for May, another prize for his key contribution in helping Down edge past Donegal in the Ulster quarter-final. Coulter scored 1-4 – his goal in extra-time proving the difference between the sides. But a scoring day like that, says Coulter, is fast becoming a thing of the past, so much so that he won’t be bothered attending games once he retires.

“It’s a pain . . . That’s the way the game is gone, that’s the way people are getting results by doing different tactics and dropping men back. You’re just not getting free-flowing football, with an eight- or nine-man defence. Defensive systems usually come out on top and it’s hard for teams to get their star forwards on the ball because there’s four men in front of a full forward line that only has two players in it. It’s harder for forwards to shine than it was ten, 12 years ago.

“I wouldn’t pay to watch football like that. Definitely not. When I quit that will be it. I will watch it on TV. Games are so bad nowadays that I don’t know why you would pay in or pay a fortune to go watch matches way down the country . . . .”

“I would be in favour of 13-a-side because it would leave more space on the pitch and it would make it harder for these defensive systems to come into play. Right now you might have three or four men around a man tackling, so maybe only one or two should be allowed tackle.

“When a forward gets a ball he’s surrounded and more often than not he’s blown for over-carrying, but what is he supposed to do? Maybe they should look in changing those rules rather than changing stupid fist-passing rules.”

Last month, Derry forward Paddy Bradley announced he would be retiring at the end of the season and Coulter, who at 28 is just a year younger than Bradley, understands why.

“Paddy Bradley is a great player. Maybe at the start of his career he was flying but now the defensive system is probably curtailing his influence on games. I can see where he is coming from, because it is definitely not as enjoyable as it used to be. . . .

“Every team is starting to adopt it now, aren’t they? Even at club football in my own county . . . . I’m afraid to say that it’s turning into a national problem. We have talked the last few years about doing it, but this is the first year that we actually have. James McCartan has come in and said that’s the way we were going to go. It has actually worked well for us, so he’s right in what he’s doing, I suppose.

“But look at the Down teams in ’91 and ’94 and they were all about all-out attack. I would love to have been playing then.

“Definitely it’s not as enjoyable as it was before. When I was 18 or 19 playing for the club it was fantastic and I loved every minute of it. It was the same playing for the county at the start. It was brilliant. But as the years went on it hasn’t been as good as it used to be.”

• GALWAY'S Ger Farragher won the hurler of the month award for May, the first in the history of the Opel GPA scheme to win back-to-back awards.