Why wont die hard GAA fans admit football these days is muck?

I'm lovin the GAA football these days. Had great time last year with the new format, and all of the additional games. Can't wait for Saturday evening to head to MAcHale PArk in Castlebar and shouting on Mayo to get a bit of revenge for last years Championship defeat to Roscommon. I'll record the other matches that are on TV, and watch them intermittingly over the weekend when I get a chance. I couldn't care less if there are 50 hand passes in a row. I just get a buzz from the excitement.

yeah....

Good call CB …. Saying it as it is…..ignore the dudes with the abacuses out and the stats book in their árse pockets.

Lots of missing the point here on why hand passing has become so prevalent. Its because of massed defences. Kicking aimlessly into a scoring zone crowded with 28 players it what some seem to want to see instead. Space is whats needed not elimination of the handpass. Increasingly I am thinking 13-a-side should be trialled. At least at inter county.

The two GAA sports have a serious problem with the way the games are being played, namely the obsession with possession, as it leads to some god-awful practices in both codes.

In football, you have the excessive hand-passing over and back, the fear of shooting from outside the 30 yard line, the negative mass defences, the almost extinct nature of the 1v1 battles. For every good game of football, you have 3 or 4 that are just turgid, there's too many football team that simply just play an awful brand of the game that leads to too many bad games.

But at least football admits there's problems and is trying to sort itself out, trying different rules, different formats, even if they don't work out.

Hurling has no such self-awareness, it's pure head up your own ar*e territory at this stage with hurling, and the problem with sticking your head up your ar*e for so long is eventually you get sh*t for brains, which is the case with hurling. You can't be an inter-county hurler these days without being a rampant cheat. Between the constant throwing, the steps, the barging, the pulling/dragging, the tactical fouling committed by players, you can't play the game these days without having to resort to some form of cheating to get by. How a sport approach 100 stoppages a game meaning around only 2/5 of the match is actual ball in play can considered to have flow is beyond me. And in order for the sport to have it's "flow", the referee has to turn a bling eye to 50/60 blatant throws a game, at least 70/80 pulls/drags a game from minor to major attempts, at 70/80 offences in terms of steps. Any sport that requires an official to ignore 200 indiscretions a game is hardly indicative of a sport in a healthy place. Never mind outside of the Munster Championship and All-Ireland series, there's virtually no real competitiveness in the sport at all. And to top it off, hurling people tend to get apoplectic when the refs (shock/horror) apply the rules, and claim the sport is being ruined.

I'd argue with the way things are going, football will hit upon a way that makes the game much more easier to play and much more entertaining (something like designated forwards to open up the field a bit), and when that happens it'll kill off hurling, simply because football, for all it's ills, it at least trying to improve compared to hurling.

But the sports away with it somewhat at the minute because the good stuff is so good it masks the bad which allows them still to be still entertaining (that holds more true in hurling which for it's disastrous attempts at self-sabotage through piety and arrogance is still outrageous in it's brilliance and entertainment at times) . And for some, as long as it's entertaining, everything is fine (again, holds more true in hurling). The sports have real problems, but because we have an entertaining highlights reel, the problems don't get addressed.

And the biggest problem that both codes need to be addressed in the possession at all costs philosophy in both codes, which while it might be smarter use of the ball (at least if the use of the ball is legal), is taking some of the contest and unpredictability out of the sports and replacing them with monotonous routine, most notably in football's passages of just hand-passing and hurling stop every twenty seconds form of playing. We need rules that force teams to play the games more honestly and create a bit of chaos in a possession dominated sport that strips the monotony from them.

And I reckon if they did, we'd have not only both sports in a much better place, but ones that are much more entertaining as well.

You cant have players playing 15 a side at club and then 13 a side at county.

All my posts are honest. That post is a repetition of what was posted plenty of times before. And because it introduced hurling into a discussion about football it is too long, and I found it hard to pick out the bits about football.

Mass defences want attacking teams to kick the ball in. Aimless or otherwise.

if you took the hand pass away you would see a massive decrease in blanket defenses , defenders would be under pressure straight away in possession and would have no choice but to kick the ball away , it also would be a worthless exercise trying to work the ball up the field via kick passing

That's a bit of a nonsense argument as if you're kicking long and therefore transferring the ball at speed there needs to be forwards there to receive it. Being that you can't be in two places at once there couldn't be a massed defence as you need forwards coming back to create a massed defence in the first place. Quick transitions would therefore necessitate that forwards stay forward and by extension the backs who mark them must also stay close by which stretches the field significantly.

I personally can't see any justification for not limiting the handpasses to two in a row.

A lot of this weekends football was rubbish… let’s call a spade a spade.

I watched the Ros/ Kerry game on Tv. Dull as ditchwater…. You could hear the crowd talking.

Anyone who thinks this is a good product is not being honest, in my opinion.

There’s no doubt pg, that changes need to be made to make the game a vibrant skillful exciting event it could be.

Watching games, not all, but way too many ,with players trundling back and forth between the 45 metre areas via numerous hand passes is

not a good product.

I will continue to watch more in trepidation than hope of the odd half decent game .

I'm sure it won't prevent you from countless moaning about it every week here though!!