There was a small sigh from Marty Morrissey late on in the first half in Salthill on Saturday evening. “It’s actually 15 minutes now since Galway scored,” he noted, “it’s very similar to last year’s All Ireland final ... retaining possession and not really having a go.”
No more than ourselves he might have anticipated the rule tweaks heralding a new dawn of free-flowing football and scoring avalanches. Just 1-4 to 0-5 at the break, though, and not 6-56 to 5-34 as we’d hoped.
Having Éamonn Fitzmaurice of the Football Review Committee alongside him in the RTÉ commentary box was a little like having the mechanic who was meant to have fixed your car in the passenger seat when you took it for a run only for the engine to start spluttering before grinding to a halt.
“If we thought the new rules were going to make a wonderful spectacle...,” said Peter Canavan at half time, his voice trailing off because he didn’t want to be a negative Nelly. The new rules, he reckoned, deserved a bit more than one half of football before being judged.
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But? “It’s still the same old football,” he said, although there was one positive: “Last year Armagh had 15 behind the ball, now it’s only 12.”
Tomás Ó Sé was happy enough, though, telling Peter and our host Damian Lawlor, the trio standing pitchside at Pearse Stadium, that he was enjoying it, although he seemed less enamoured of the man wearing a seagull’s head behind him. Damian asked the seagull if he’d recovered from the injury he sustained in last year’s All-Ireland final, but because seagulls can’t talk we never found out. He looked grand, though.
There was no little optimism prematch that these changes would make for a more entertaining game, although Éamonn conceded that it would take time for everyone to get to grips with them. “I’ve seen it mentioned that it’s going to be unnatural this week, but I would say that playing 15 behind the ball is unnatural and we got used to that.” True.
Tomás Ó Sé was hopeful too. “It’s an invitation to play open fast football, and I think that’s what we all want,” he said. But neither Galway nor Armagh were up for accepting the invitation in that first half. “It’s 17 minutes now since Armagh last scored,” said Marty, Éamonn wishing he’d put away his stopwatch.
Fair play to Marty, though, he’d done his homework on the rules. Like when Galway got a free on the half-time hooter:
Marty: “It has to be scored directly. If an Armagh defender touches it, it won’t count.”
Éamonn: “Correct. Top of the class, Marty!”
Marty: “Thank you!”
Second half? Much better, with especially outstanding displays from the officials tasked with spotting when each side didn’t keep three men in their own halves. A possible tweak to that rule might be to only ever allow them have three men in their own half just to cut down on the blanket defending lark. That could come yet.
Marty was still testing Éamonn – “it was actually 24 minutes since Armagh scored before Rory Grugan put that over the bar” – but the game got livelier, Galway in particular no longer afraid to penetrate the 40-metre arc for fear of getting an electric shock.
And in the closing stages of the game Storm Éowyn even returned to have a look, the shiny new floodlights in Salthill fortunate not to end up in Longford such was the strength of the gale.
“It wasn’t the most exhilarating of games,” admitted Marty, “but there is potential in these new rules, I’ve no doubt.”
Alas, the game between Dublin and Mayo over on TG4 was proving that there’s a long way to go. So much for fast football – for 3½ hours you would have seen more movement from a statue, the two teams quite literally static all that time.
At which point TG4 told us that Storm Éowyn had banjaxed their coverage on their player and the Sky platform so it was actually the All-Ireland junior club final between An Cheathrú Rua and Naomh Pádraig from earlier in the day that was frozen in time.
That was a relief because the last thing Éamonn needed to be hearing from Marty was that “it’s actually 3½ hours since the players of Dublin and Mayo last moved in Croke Park”.
Anyway the new dawn is up and running. Hope springs eternal that we’re in for free-flowing football, scoring avalanches and Marty no longer needing to use his stopwatch to monitor scoreboard inactivity.
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