The 2023 All Ireland Senior Football Championship (Sam Maguire Cup)

The way football is played now doesnt favor the skillful forwards, we want to see them kick nice scores, thats hard to do with a blanket defence, clifford is too good for the blanket defence but he is a one off, un-stoppable really.

Yeah there are no good forwards in the game anymore.

Well maybe apart from the likes of Ryan O'Donoghue, Tommy Conroy. Sean O'Shea, Shane Walsh, Con o'callaghan, Colm Basquel, Cormac Costello, Shane Mcguigan, Conor Mcmanus, Ruairi/Darragh Canavan, Darren Mccurry etc

Well to be fair that was mentioned in the post I was replying to!

Mayo actually played some lovely football in the first half.

Far better than anything the likes of Derry served up over the weekend.

I would have agreed to an extent a few years ago in thinking that football would evolve to overcome blanket defences.

However it has been a feature of the game for well over a decade now.

The only thing that has evolved is lateral possession at all costs which only has compounded the negative entertainment value of the sport.

The two double header Quarter finals last year had 122k in attendance and last weekend it was 139k

There was 142k at 2 All Ireland semi finals last year will be interesting to see how that compares on the 15th,16th of July

And another nonsense post from the whinger from Meath , who wont even support his County !

It will be the same as the first half of Kerry v Tyrone for most of it.

If Kerry can stretch a lead a bit, it might open up late on. But edge of the seat stuff it certainly will not be.

You dont have to get the ball back off him, you just have to stop him progressing up the field by standing in front of him, then wait for him to play the ball in.

I hate seeing 1 attacker surrounded by 4 opposition players, I think they should only allow 2 players max to tackle an opposition player.

Totally agree with this.

The rule is 4 steps OR held in the hand(s) for no longer than the time needed to take four steps

If a player throws himself to the ground and still has the ball after 2 seconds then it should be a free to the opposition.

This needs to be more strictly enforced and would lead to quicker sharper passing and more turnovers together with less diving and less "easy" frees. AND all without a rule change.

To me it looks like Meath fans are boycotting all Meath matches.

I believe there is a word for that 🤔

The game doesn't favor unskillful forwards more like. Skilful forwards are still thriving, it's the mediocre ones that are suffering with the packed defence, the good players are still succeeding, regardless of the number on their backs. The points about the tackle and steps etc are very valid - lots of chatter about rule changes and all sorts, but enforcing the rules that exist first would be better. Make the ball become available to tackle more often and if that doesn't work, then change the rules.

Yes, this taking the ball into contact is the cause of a lot of pulling and dragging and then frees, in the game.

As was said in other posts the onus really should be on the ball carrier to release or play the ball properly

to avoid the tackle.

This business of charging in ,ball in both arms, and then falling, has to be properly refereed.

Otherwise it will just be a scragging,and dragging fest as it seems to be now given the tactics used.