MOST PEOPLE CAN go through their life gloriously unaware and blissfully uncaring about the vast majority of GAA’s central committees.
There has been no chance of that happening with the Football Review Committee.
Since being announced in a blaze of publicity, the figurehead of the group, Jim Gavin, was given a blank sheet to draw up a new vision for Gaelic football.
So far, the work had been impressive. Most especially in how they have presented the fruits of their agonising and round table chats.
Even in that, they were careful to examine the prototypes of Gaelic Football 2.0. A number of ‘sandbox’ games were held and kept deliberately low-profile so that they could examine the tinkering.
In the past, Gavin has talked about his approach to management. It’s all forensic this and stress-testing that. It might be best described as akin to the Japanese word of ‘Kaizen.’ Translating as ‘Improvement’, it is a concept of business activities that continuously improve all functions and involves all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers.
In real terms, this was brought to reality in the way the weekend games were forums of debate.
That’s why, after the game, the media could ask questions of not only Jim Gavin, but also the Ulster player Paddy Burns. Burns wasn’t entirely gone on every aspect of the changes. But his opinions were sought and there wasn’t a trace of discomfort in Gavin when his objections were respectfully outlined.
🗣️ 'It's difficult to know you're putting in your last two years but one of them... we tried that for a year and it was parked again!'@Armagh_GAA's Paddy Burns gives an honest answer as to whether he'd be happy to defend #SamMaguire with the new rules.@AIB_GAA #TheToughest pic.twitter.com/wDAcyT0PS4
— Off The Ball (@offtheball) October 20, 2024
With TG4 on Friday night, and RTÉ on Saturday, their excellent presenters were given the time and space to interview a number of erudite footballers.
Without the threat of an upcoming game or having an overbearing manager peering over their shoulder, the players showed that when you pick the right topic and the correct interview subject, you can learn more about the sport than you ever dared to hope.
And then you had the sight of the GAA President, Jarlath Burns, moving around huddles of teams, presumably laying out the Association’s hopes for the new rules.
It all felt collaborative and grown-up. That players have a stake in things. That hasn’t always been the case as various rule changes such as the mark, black cards, and shortlived handpassing restrictions have been brought in without a by your leave from a single player.
The effect of imposing rules like this, has become obvious.
The Irish are great talkers. An opinion, right or wrong, is prized over an agnostic response.
At times of rule changes, journalists will inevitably ask managers and players their opinion. Some may not be in favour, and it makes for decent news stories.
There is nothing wrong with debate, something this particular committee have understood from the beginning.
Right now, we are at the end game for the FRC. They are busy dotting some I’s and crossing the T’s.
They will shave off the four points for a goal, and two for a 45. They might add in a piece here and there. But essentially they have broken the back on their work ahead of the Special Congress on 30 November when it will all be on the table for voting.
From gun to tape, it is just over nine months since work began to their final reckoning.
It would be a mistake therefore, to see the National Hurling Development Committee in the same light.
The FRC has been a 60-metre sprint. The HDC is more like an ultra-endurance event.
There is no rush on this group. The targets and timeframes are two entirely different things.
After becoming the GAA President, Jarlath Burns gave a wide-ranging interview to the GAA website in which he outlined his position on what he felt he could achieve during his time in the role.
His hope for football, was to change it as a spectacle. For hurling, it was more holistic.
While pointing out that there has never been as much hurling played, he added the caveat, “It’s also a fact that the ‘Prairie fire’ that Michael Cusack talked about hasn’t spread properly to the north of the country and I would like to be a catalyst whereby we would see an explosion of new clubs.
“Without new clubs we can’t have hurling and the likes of a county like Armagh can’t have the ambition to win at a higher level than they are. So that’s going to be my main priority in hurling. Until we have more clubs competing at a higher level, hurling is never going to reach its full potential. That is something I want to put a major focus on.
“The Hurling Development Committee that I have chosen has come from a different demographic. It’s come from people who have set up hurling clubs in football areas. People who have maybe set up brand new clubs and they will be in a unique position to identify the challenges and the realistic opportunities that we have.
“That’s not something I’ll be able to measure in three years. That’s a very long-term project where we create a new culture where football clubs can also play hurling without threatening football and by doing so effectively give a whole new generation of young people a chance to play the game that we all want to play, and I unfortunately never did have that chance myself.”
It will not have the immediate impact, but the work is ongoing now to identify the pockets of space where standalone hurling clubs could be formed, as well as the efforts needed to entice football-only clubs to give the wee ball a go.
It will be long and arduous. Being absolutely ruthless about it and putting it in Central Council terms, if 67% of the new club established are still in operation in 30 years’ time, then it will have transformed the sport.
There will be no ‘Ta-Da’ moment in Croke Park, televised to an action-hungry public. There might not even be a puffy coat in it for the members.
And the hardest thing for them to stomach will be what the former National Hurling Director Martin Fogarty calls, ‘Sabotage.’
To be straight, there’s a lot of running interference against hurling, especially in the strong football counties. Knifing the tyres of hurling can take many forms, but one of the most novel and inventive ways is the proliferation of football clubs suddenly establishing ‘development squads’ for U14 players, which in reality is only a handful of U14 players, but a whole load of U12s.
What’s the big deal, you’d ask. Well, it swallows up yet another night of the week where children are at football for the nth time, rather than attend hurling once a week.
Look, there’s many more examples. And hurling people from established clubs themselves are not squeaky clean either. Fogarty also warns of the enemy within, those underage coaches that want to put 40 points on a developing club just to make themselves feel better.
The work is not for the faint hearted. And it is already ongoing. The GAA have advertised for a new National Director of Hurling. Funding has been made available for hurling-only coaches to go into schools. Only in the last week, Tyrone advertised for two positions.
The people presently running the GAA will all have changed by the time this committee’s work really comes to fruition.
You just hope that those following value the long-termism required.
