Kevin McStay: Plenty of scope for improving football as a spectacle

My late father had a phrase that combined his love and admiration for the GAA with the frustration that it could sometimes cause him. He would sit there extolling the association’s virtues and all that ordinary volunteers achieved in the community but he could equally bemoan the conservatism and suspicious attitudes to change.

“The very thing that drives us forward, holds us back,” he used to say.

I’m now a full 12 months off the sidelines after three years in county management and, at the start of the year, I started making a note of topics and controversies as they occurred during the season. A lot of them were fairly familiar from my time with Roscommon last year or the Mayo under-21s all of 20 years ago.

I thought football in 2019 had a pretty decent year but there were also glaring issues that continued to crop up during the season for which there are available relatively quick-fix solutions that would allow the game to flourish.

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You had the drawn All-Ireland final proving that when a match is well refereed and has two teams going at it, football can be an incredible spectacle but can we not remedy the obvious shortcomings?

A handful of reasonable people in a room would sort out about 70 per cent of what I’m talking about. I have a couple of pints after work on a Monday with friends and when we talk about this sort of stuff they’d say, ‘sure that would be easy to fix if only they did this . . .’

But we never ‘only’ do it! In military parlance there are two departments: there are ‘the lessons identified’ which are very important but then there’s ‘the execution of the lessons identified,’ which later become ‘the lessons learned’. But if you just keep identifying lessons, all you’re left with is a list.

There is this feeling that the GAA’s default condition for dealing with things is firefighting mode. Everyone knows there’s an issue but until the actual fire breaks out, nothing happens.

The All-Ireland was scarcely over before RTÉ were running a Prime Time piece on a concern that’s become widespread. It’s something I have written about and I was asked to appear – the sense that too many bounces of the ball favour Dublin at the moment.

Their playing two matches in Croke Park during the Super 8s is something I’d written about earlier in the year. It has to be acknowledged that annual congress had the chance to do something about it but voted heavily against the Donegal motion, which was trying to restrict Dublin to one fixture in what is effectively their home pitch.

Decent argument

It was a decent argument even if it descended to a bit of ground hurling and plain daftness – Dublin's John Costello called it 'divisive and mean-spirited' while Kerry's former president Seán Kelly said it 'deserved a negative response'.

As a television pundit, I hate having to go over refereeing decisions and me with the advantage of slow-motion replays

Now I know the drafting of the motion was considered a problem but surely it could have been amended and an non-emotive debate had on the matter. Instead nothing was done and hostility to the status quo increased over the summer and now, suddenly the GAA have a motion for next year to allow Dublin’s ‘Croke Park round’ to be fixed for another venue.

Why wait a year to do this? I know there is a tendency to break everything down into pro- and anti-Dublin positions but this was a reasonable idea in the interests of fairness.

Another really important issue is the creation of optimum conditions for referees. As a television pundit, I hate having to go over refereeing decisions and me with the advantage of slow-motion replays. The purpose can’t help feeling like an invitation to make a fool of the ref.

It crossed my mind watching the Kilkenny-Limerick hurling semi-final and that incident at the end where the sideline ball went out over the end-line off Cillian Buckley’s stick. In a matter of seconds the referee could have been advised that the correct decision was a’65’ and not a wide.

If it had been a score instead of a wide, Hawk-Eye would have intervened. What is the effective difference? People say, ‘but we couldn’t install it in all venues’. Hawk-Eye’s available in just two stadia and that doesn’t stop it playing a valuable role.

When Stephen Cluxton came off his line early for the penalty save in the drawn final, I had it rerun within eight or nine seconds in the commentary position. This type of 'Ref-Assist' doesn't have to be unacceptably intrusive.

Peter Crowley wasn't spotted squirting water at Cormac Costello, also in the drawn match. How could the referee see it unless he'd eyes in the back of his head? Linesmen are better positioned but if they're following the play, they too mightn't see.

It was captured on television but that mightn’t have been too embarrassing except that you have potentially 80,000 mini-cameras shooting the same thing and by the time the match is over, it’s all over social media.

Maybe there would be the odd mistake when it was bedding down but this isn't the criminal law – better 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man be imprisoned

A ‘Ref-Assist’ protocol would really help the match official.

I’d also like to see the top referees used for all of the matches from quarter-finals on, never mind whose turn it is or anything else – apart from who’s in form as a match official.

Difficult subject

Other matters that in my view could be tidied up include ‘diving’. Referees say it’s a difficult subject to adjudicate but it drives the public mad – ‘we don’t want to be like soccer’ (despite soccer being so proactive when it comes to their rules).

One solution in my view would be to stiffen it from a yellow- to a red-card infraction. I’d do the same with verbal abuse, or sledging, and upgrade it from yellow and black to red.

Maybe there would be the odd mistake when it was bedding down but this isn’t the criminal law – better 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man be imprisoned; this is an endemic problem. I can guarantee this. A couple of months of red cards and every manager in the country is telling his players to stay on their feet and shut up.

On the subject of soccer, I would also like to see the shaving foam used to ensure that frees are taken from where they are awarded in the opposition half. We’ve seen countless examples of players stealing metres on the place where the free was originally awarded.

When I'm co-commentating on a match and on replay we can see that an incident involving a dirty stroke has taken place, the first question is whether the ref has dealt with it because if he has, that's generally the matter closed. This is the so-called John Bannon rule (the Longford referee who successfully campaigned against the previous system of asking match officials to review over-leniently administered yellow cards) and I've huge issues with it.

If red-card infractions happen, they should be punished accordingly. I was in Cavan the day Tiernan McCann fish-hooked Stephen McMenamin. 'Fortunately', the referee David Gough didn't spot it so the incident could be revisited but again, a 'Ref-Assist' video review would have settled the issue immediately. Anything that helps referees not to look foolish afterwards would be worth looking at.

Broadening it out a little, I’m convinced many followers of football have a poor knowledge of the rules, certainly compared with their counterparts in rugby and soccer. I’m always fascinated watching rugby matches with friends – it’s a great sport to watch but to me the rules are incomprehensible – who are always good at explaining what’s going on in a game.

I think that’s partly to do with the ‘Ref-Link’ in rugby, which allows spectators to hear what decisions are being taken and why.

This season The Sunday Game started to get audio feed from referees and it was hugely effective in creating clarity for us in commentary. If it was extended to spectators I think it would be a game changer for the GAA and would help to address a lot of the ridiculously ill-informed comments referees have to endure after matches.

Rule changes

I’m also a supporter of the increasingly popular idea of having two referees but for the biggest matches, from provincial finals on to All-Ireland quarter-finals and beyond.

Then there are smaller things like scheduling. Last June was the second year that a qualifier match in Newbridge has clashed with the Irish Derby, 20 minutes away in the Curragh. Did no-one make a note of that in 2018 to say, let’s try not to let that happen again?

And on the subject of scheduling how is it possible to have a weekend with just one football match and on each side – the weekend before and the one after – to have 13 and 11 fixtures, respectively, as happened last June?

Surely someone maintains a ‘to do’ list for items like these?

Rule changes in general can be haphazard. There are three going to next month’s special congress. One, the forward mark, never got a true trial in my view because not everyone – Dublin especially – was willing to work it, as it wasn’t going to apply in the championship.

That ended up poorly thought through with the best team in the country not bothered with it. The 20-metre kick-out doesn’t seem to be very contentious, presumably because it’s a good idea.

On the merits of introducing a sin bin for black-card infractions, I think it’s a disgrace and makes cynical fouling a far more profitable business than under the current rule.

There is actually scope to look again at the rules on what in other sports is called professional fouling – deliberately breaking the rules to prevent or hinder a score. The current black card infractions don’t cover every instance of this and it would be a good idea to tighten up the rules surrounding this area.

There was a good deal of quirky discussion after the drawn All-Ireland on the subject of what David Moran and Tommy Walsh were apparently preparing, as Dean Rock was lining up the potentially fateful free in the last minute.

I would also ban passing back to the goalkeeper. Research shows that it happens on average about 10 times in a match. It wouldn't be missed

Were a winning point in an All-Ireland final to have been prevented by one player hoisting another up to block a free kick, there would have been mayhem. It’s not covered in the rules at the moment. That shouldn’t continue to be the case next year.

Other ideas that are worth looking at include restrictions on the involvement of goalkeepers in general play which I think adds little to the spectacle and, in the case of free-taking, wastes time on an industrial scale. I wouldn’t let a ’keeper take a free from beyond the 20-metre line or join general play beyond the 45-metre line.

I would also ban passing back to the goalkeeper. Research shows that it happens on average about 10 times in a match. It wouldn’t be missed.

Anyway, it’s been an historic season and we’ve seen record-breaking champions and some great matches. There’s a lot to look forward to but that doesn’t mean things can’t be improved.