A rethink in needed before new rules on cynical fouling are brought in next January.

G.A.A. officials should act immediately to ensure that the move coming into operation next year whereby a player found guilty of committing a cynical foul and is sent from the field of play, only to be replaced by another player will never happen.

I know I am going to get messages reminding me that I never played hurling or football in my life and that I should butt of interfering and commenting on something that will not affect me. I may be told that I don’t know what I am talking about. But such comments will not cause me to loose any sleep. They will go in one ear and out the other.

To me there is nothing like a good game of hurling. A good game of hurling to me is a fine art. Football can also be a good game to watch when it is played the way it should. It can be a beautiful game, much more so than another code of football that its supporters call ‘the beautiful game’.

However in recent years, Gaelic Football had become a very cynical game. It has become a horrible game to watch at times. The way it is played is turning people off playing and watching it and if G.A.A. Officials are not careful, many will give up on the game completely, especially with the younger generations.

I don’t know what way any county voted in respect of the new rules coming into play in 2014, and to be honest I don’t really care. I would however, love to hear why especially from counties that voted for the moves as to why they voted the way they did.

I have attended enough County Board Meetings to know how some decisions are taken. Usually the same people debate a topic. There is an unofficial competition to see who can speak the longest and more importantly as to who will speak last before the chairman calls time on the debate. A vote is often called for, a show of hands will often to do carry or reject a proposal. Some of those that have not taken part in the earlier debate have begun to nod off, often out of boredom and someone notice that some people are raising their hands, so they decide to do the same, sometimes I suspect without fully understanding what they are voting for or against.

Voting for the introduction of a Black Card into the G.A.A. has to be one of the biggest joke in the association’s long history. I am sure that right now, there are players and coaches out there who are rubbing their hands and secretly laughing at those that made the new rules. They like me, know that the new rule will solve nothing, and will if anything only lead to more cynical play than we see right now.

Next year we could see a full back for example, just outside the penalty area cynically foul an incoming player. He will be prepared to pay the consequences, and be sent to the stand, knowing that he can be replaced for his actions. He will feel it is better to pull down a player and allow someone to put over a free rather than maybe let him have the chance to shoot for goal. A few minutes later, the player that replaces the player already dismissed finds himself in the same situation and will be prepared to do the same thing.

The G.A.A. at times likes to look at the way other sports do things, and to see if what these other sports do things can help improve (or otherwise) the G.A.A. and the way it does things.

Take the Ladies Football Association as an example. They were allowing five subs to be used for some time before the G.A.A. allowed five replacements to be used.

The name Finbar O’Driscoll won’t mean anything to most I am sure reading this. To those that remember the name will remember him as a leading referee in Ladies Football in the 1990’s. He refereed the 1997 (I stand to be corrected on that) final between Waterford and Monaghan. Most people in Croke Park that day were in agreement that there was an amount of stoppage time to be played at the end of the second half. Most would have said between five and six minutes. However, again standing to be corrected on it, there was in the region of twelve minutes added. Most could not understand where this time came from. Naturally, after the game, it was the main topic of conversation. The Ladies Football Association had to act and the following year they had the count down clock in operation and everyone could see what time was left to play. Ever since, the clock is in use for most major games at National level.

We are told that the clock is coming to the G.A.A. Will it remains to be seen. We were told it was coming before and it never came.

Hawk-eye is in use in other sports. It was introduced into the G.A.A. this year, but only at games played at Croke Park. Will the G.A.A. take it up full time and install the technology at all grounds. I hope not. I know of no team of officials that go out to deliberately do any team. They might make mistakes. They won’t get everything right. The day we take human error out of the game is a major mistake. Do we make the same furore about mistakes made by players and management teams as when match officials make them? Mistakes made by the formers are more likely to have an effect on the game than the latter.

If the G.A.A. is serious however about cutting the cynical fouling out of our games, they have to look at other games and how they do things. Maybe they could look at Ladies Football for the way they do things.

Ladies football was and is supposed to be a non contact sport, but you can’t have that. You have to have some physical contact, otherwise you won’t have people playing or watching. You can’t have a game where you allow a team in procession of the ball to waltz through the oppositions defence and not to be stopped.   

However, a while back the game may have been getting a little too physical, and it was decided to bring in the sin bin rule. Does it work, yes it does, and it works well.

In Ladies football, when a player is found guilty of a cynical foul, they are ordered off the field for ten minutes. If the foul happens inside the last ten minutes of the first half, the watch is stopped at the break and the player has to finish their ten minutes off the field at the start of the second half.

In the run up to last years All-Ireland Intermediate Final between Waterford and Armagh in Croke Park, I got to speak to a number of the players and the management team for previews in the Munster Express and on this blog. I asked some if they felt that discipline was key in Ladies Football. All agreed that it was. The feeling was that a player standing on the side line or sitting in the stand is no good to you, and that they would have to think carefully before doing something stupid. You have to have 15 on the field at all times. Having less was putting the players on the field under pressure.

Could the same work in the men’s game? I think it could and would. If teams were cut to have their numbers temporally cut to fourteen or even more, as there is no reason why you cant have more than one player in the stands at any one time, players and more over coaches will have to change the way they do things and be successful.

Football in particular has become hard and painful to watch in the last few years. If it is not the dreadful blanket defence, it’s the cynical fouling. The G.A.A. has to act and act quickly if it wants people to be playing and attending its games.  Failure to act will result that championships from next year becoming a bigger joke and a bigger turn off that they have become over the past few years.