The GAA said that it is keen to maintain the work of the Football Review Committee, which on Saturday saw all of its proposals accepted by special congress. Part of the FRC final report was a list of 19 recommendations, not included on the congress clár, for future consideration.
These range from reviewing the idea of a four-point goal at the end of 2026 to initiating a new handpass rule – anyone receiving on must then kick the ball – at under-15 level and below.
They also include the establishment of two new bodies, one to continue the analysis work of the Games Intelligence Unit, which provided data about the new rule for the FRC this year and the other, an expert football committee to advise the Standing Committee on the Playing Rules (SCPR).
Speaking about these recommendations after Saturday’s congress, association president Jarlath Burns said that they would initially be looked at by the SCPR.
RM Block
“We are going to start looking at those through the Standing Committee on Playing Rules. But there’s one of the recommendations to set up an expert group and an analysis group and an awful lot of the work that they have done, we would be very keen to maintain it, particularly around how we capture data in games.
“Because every decision you make has to be informed not by emotion, but by the actual data that comes from games and that’s how you achieve change, rationally and pragmatically. Not because you see one bad game and decide to change everything – and there have been some bad games under these rules. There will always be bad games. But that’s how we will proceed.”
There was an acknowledgment that FRC chair Jim Gavin’s position as a presidential candidate had been a delicate balance for the GAA. Gavin appeared only at the end of the congress and took no part in proposing the motions, which was taken care of by SCPR chair Liam Keane.
“It’s just something to be mindful of,” said director general Tom Ryan. “The big issue and the big business today is football and that’s what we’re all charged with, football and Gaelic games. So, it was just a question of making sure that everybody respected that football had to take precedence.
“Jim’s in a very high profile position at the moment, as you know. He has to be mindful of himself so there was never any real contention. I know it was a matter of quite an amount of public speculation about what form it was going to take.
“I hope people felt that it passed off okay. I hope the lads on the committee felt that it passed off okay. I hope that Jim himself felt that it passed off okay. We just wanted to do things in an orderly and a respectful way that was cognisant of all of the outside eyes on us and the most important thing, which we did, was to get the business of the day done.”
Burns was asked about criticism of the presence of AFL teams the previous week in Croke Park where the Pittsburgh Steelers and Minnesota Vikings played a league match.
“I do know that there was somebody who came over and he had disparaging marks to make about the NFL, the same way as that if we go up north there are people who make very disparaging marks about the GAA if you choose to look at the GAA through a particular lens.
“We chose to look at it through a different lens. We went over to Pittsburgh last year, spent a week with the Rooney family, and they are rooted in their Irish roots, very, very proud to be Irish, in fact one of the events we were at was an Ireland Funds dinner that they hosted and paid for in their stadium.
“I saw more people of colour in this stadium than I’ve ever seen it, on the field and off the field at that match, in fact I had the words ‘end racism’ written on the pitch the first time ever.”
