Not for the first time, Darragh Ó Sé sniffed out the rat before anyone else. Back in October 2024, after the first weekend when the Football Review Committee (FRC) held their sandbox games in Croke Park and televised them for the nation, it fell to Ventry’s finest to put the whole light show in its proper context.
That weekend was a sales job, a curated Instagram version of what the new game might come to look like if people would only give these new rules a chance. But if you’ve stood in intercounty dressingrooms for long enough, you instinctively know the feel and the rub of brass tacks. What the rules really needed was the exact opposite of giving them a chance.
“Sport at the top level is always far more interested in getting around the rules than it is about enjoying them,” Ó Sé wrote in his Irish Times column the following Monday. “What the FRC needed more than anything else was for teams to come out and act the bollocks.”
Spin the tape on 18 months and the 2026 championship dawns with every inch of Darragh’s wish having been granted. Lots of games in the league were entertaining at times but still dull as double maths when the heat really came on near the end. All four finals a fortnight ago ended with an extended period of keep-ball – even Donegal chose to run down the clock at the climax of the Division One final despite being eleventy points ahead.
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Not alone that, the cynical foul is back, baby. Meath forwards launched themselves into not one but two drag-downs to kill the clock near the end of the Division Two final against Cork. Bollocks-acting of the highest order – and exactly the right thing to do in the circumstances. The rules told them what to do and they did it with extreme prejudice.
There will come a time when we stop looking at Gaelic football through the prism of the Football Rules Committee. We will eventually – promise! – fall back into the old routine of comparing this box of apples against that box of apples at the start of the championship, rather than interrogating the methods, supply chains and distribution practices by which apples are produced. But that time is not here yet.
In a way, it’s a tribute to the success of the new rules that we’re still fixating on the snag list. Football in general is so much more enjoyable now than a couple of seasons ago that it nearly feels like nit-picking to be moaning about the hooter or the refereeing or the fact that long afternoons of handpassing are still part of the menu. Most likely, it’s the flashes of potential that bring about the irritations – if we hadn’t seen such riches, we could live with being poor.
One way or the other, it’s clear that the game isn’t quite right yet. Equally clear though is the fact that we have what we have, for now. Any other tweaks and nips and tucks will have to wait until after the championship. It will be interesting to see what, if any, influence Kevin McStay’s Expert Advisory Group is able to exert as the weeks go by. We won’t be holding out breath.
It has been fascinating to watch the best of the best decide what they want the sport to be. Possession is an obsession now to an even greater extent than before the rules changes. This is interesting in a world where both soccer and rugby have been data-analysed to the point where elite teams are routinely comfortable in giving the ball to the other crowd and letting them do the work.
Rugby coaches pretty much forbid anything beyond three or four phases of possession between the 10-metre lines now, telling their players to kick if they don’t see a line-break happening quickly. In soccer, this has been the season of the kick for touch from kickoff, giving the other crowd possession immediately and telling them it’s their problem now.
Whereas Gaelic football in 2026 is all about hands on the ball. Donegal turned the ball over just five times in the entire league final against Kerry, only two – TWO! – of which were misplaced passes. You can moan and gripe all day about the lack of a rule limiting the handpass but for the next three months at least, the teams that keep the ball best are the ones who will be there after everyone else has melted away.
That’s why kickouts are the greatest variable in the game now. Kerry riddled Armagh’s kick out in the second half of last year’s All-Ireland quarter-final, a massacre to show how pivotal it is to everything. But then Kerry died by the sword in the league final, with Donegal sticking four speedsters in around the arc and a necklace of giants across the 45. Every goalie in the country knows how ugly things can get if you’re unable to get your kick out away.
In a way, it’s a bit of a leveller. Kieran McGeeney wasn’t wrong when he said the kick out has been reduced to “pure piggery” – he just said it like it was a bad thing. But for those of us watching on, it means every restart has to be watched and every dirty ball put under the microscope. That it drives the control freaks in the Bainisteoir bibs up the walls is merely a bonus.
It’s worth remembering for all that, last year’s championship was a big improvement on what had been going on before it, the knockout stages were a bit of a dud. Meath beat Galway by a point in one of the quarter-finals but otherwise the winning margins were six, eight, seven, 20, six and 10.
And that was after we all fell over each other in the middle of June declaring it the most open championship in years. Yeah, so open that Kerry ended up cantering to Sam Maguire, beating four Ulster teams in five weeks by an average of eight points a game. They do love an open championship in the Kingdom.
So what should we expect this time around? Kerry don’t ever struggle for motivation but they have the chance this year to become the first county to win 40 All-Ireland titles. Jack O’Connor was finishing up last July but it didn’t take him long to do a reverse ferret on that idea and he has been noticeably light and breezy throughout the spring campaign. Taking a hiding from Donegal in the final won’t occupy too much of his bandwidth – certainly not as much as getting Shane Ryan, Gavin White and Paudie Clifford out of the treatment room soon.
As for Donegal, they’ve played 40 games in league and championship in Jim McGuinness’s second stint and lost just seven. They’ve been to an All-Ireland final, won two Ulsters and carried off their first ever National League. In the two seasons before he arrived for his second stint, they’d lost 13 out of 23, been relegated to Division Two and failed to reach Croke Park in the championship. The turnaround only needs one more degree of spin to complete itself.
We have no reason to imagine them doing anything other than going baldheaded for a third Ulster title on the bounce. They had every reason under the sun to tie up and cry tiredness as the championship went on last year but their run to the All-Ireland final suggests wading through Ulster did them no harm. A provincial semi-final is in prospect between them and Armagh on the May bank holiday – hard to see either of them taking a tug on the reins.
For once though, the provincial championships have more to offer than just our friends in the north. Leinster looks like a genuine competition for the first time since the mid-to-late 2000s. For Dublin to win it, they’ll likely have to beat Louth and Meath, aka the team that won last year’s title as well as the one that knocked them out in the semi-final. All with Ger Brennan suspended and in the wake of a relegation.
Connacht has three candidates who couldn’t care less which of the other two is coming at them on any given day. There’s even a vague chance that Cork could do something down south – the last time they were promoted out of Division Two during their league campaign was 2009 and they went on to win Munster that year, including wiping Kerry in a replay. Different times, different sport. But, even so.
All of it leads to the Sam Maguire rounds and a format change from last year. Though it possibly looks a little complex, the basic thrust of it is simple enough. Keep winning and you stay in the competition. Lose once and you keep going, lose twice and you’re done for the year. Everything decided on the day, extra-time and penalties if it comes to the bit.
So on we go. Fifteen weekends to play 56 matches in the All-Ireland championship and another 28 in the Tailteann Cup. A travelling circus visiting all parts of the country, some days to general indifference, others plugging into the feeling of absolute vitality and living. It’s part of who we are, with all the good intentions and bollocks-acting you could ever wish for.
Throw it in, ref.
