JOE BROLLY: What would Jim do?

I SUPPOSE they can’t give it to Clifford every year. To be fair to Ryan O’Donoghue, he is a better tackler.

Kerry’s miracle of human evolution scored 1-8 against Tyrone in the quarter final. It was an electrifying match, with David making the decisive contributions. As Adrian McGuckin used to say, “I’m suspicious of boys with fancy haircuts that score 1-4 in the first half.”

Those decisive contributions came at a time when Tyrone had turned the game in their favour. David had already scored 1-5, including one of the most brilliant goals ever seen in Croke Park. But because his abnormality has become the norm, we no longer make a fuss over it. It’s just David being David.

In the last 10 minutes, with Kerry under severe pressure and the force with Tyrone, he took it upon himself. Twice, he won balls out on the right wing and took the defenders on, driving at them with pace and bewildering dummies and feints. As defenders are coached to do, they forced him outside, refusing to let him on to his left foot and corralling him into a cul de sac as he raced in on goal.

On both occasions, as they swarmed him, he dived and fisted the ball brilliantly over the bar with his weaker right hand. With Kevin McStay’s dumb proposal, both would have been disallowed. More than that, Clifford would have been forced to overcarry or been dispossessed. Or to turn and work the ball back out. Yawn.

How does this help the flow of the game? Or the skills? Or the vital sense of adventure that Jim Gavin has restored? All it does (as they already discovered in 1990) is promote bog standard defensive work.

Then there is the maximum of three consecutive handpasses rule. With Kevin, Kerry Golden years might not have been so golden. This, and variations of this, have been trialed before on the basis of the aul lads at the bar saying, “There’s far too much handpassing” and “we should call it handball.”

In the 1946 All-Ireland final, Ulster champions Antrim, who had perfected a lightning fast handpassing game met Kerry in the semi-final. The legendary Kerry full back Joe Keohane said afterwards, “We decided the only way we could stop them was for each Kerry man to tackle the Antrim player the handpass was intended for before the ball arrived.” Or as Kerry captain Paddy Kennedy put it, “The only way to counter them was to grab the man getting the return pass, put our arms around them and hold them tight as the ball came to them.”

Antrim lost by three points and objected on the basis that Kerry’s tactics had “brought the GAA into disrepute.” The Kerry tactics caused such outrage that Central Council actually considered the objection, but ruled against awarding the game to Antrim on a 19-10 vote.

As Kerry’s purists knew in 1946, nothing disrupts imaginative team play like preventing consecutive handpasses.

By the time the 199495 National league came around, the aul lads at the bar were back and the GAA trialed a one-handpass rule meaning that a player receiving a handpass had to kick it.

Needless to say it was horrible, leading to some of the ugliest football I have partaken in (which is saying something). We went on to win that year’s league (prompting Darragh Ó Sé to pay me the compliment “Ye’ve a great team in the league”) but it was a depressing mess.

As the great Anthony Tohill put it, “All we did was give four-yard kick passes instead of handpasses and saved the handpass for when we thought it might be vital and God only knows when that was Brolin.” (Anthony calls me Brolin after the Swedish striker Thomas Brolin whose goal knocked England out of the 1992 Euros)

The result was zero chemistry, an obsession with toe tap length kick passes that only slowed the game down, and a spectacle that would make a dog eat its granny. The GAA’s conclusion when abandoning the proposal was that it was “highly unpopular, severely disrupted the flow of the game and resulted in both awkward play and tactical confusion.” Which sounds like Kevin’s Mayo team.

Worse, the exact same rule proposed now (a limit of three consecutive handpasses) was trialed in all the 2019 pre-season competitions. It stank, the players and public hated it, and it was duly dumped by Central Council.

Let us imagine for a moment that Mayo have pushed up courageously and intercepted a Dublin half back. Kobe has one-two’d with Jordan, lays it off to O’Donoghue and goes for the return that will put him through on goal. Only O’Donoghue cannot give it back to him because it will be the fourth hand pass. What a ludicrous anti-climax.

The only good proposal is switching to a four-point goal, which was in Jim Gavin’s pipeline already, so we know it’s smart and rigorously thought through. A goal used to be decisive. Now, a two pointer with the wind at your back is a much easier option. Importantly, switching to 4 points does not change any playing rule. It doesn’t make life awkward for the players or referee or enrage the spectator. It simply increases the value of the goal.

That aside, Kevin’s group is interfering for the sake of it. What we should be doing is to give the Gavin Rules another year or two to bed in. Already, they have transformed the game. Players are learning a new game, which takes time. Teams playing with the adventure mandated by them have flourished. There are full houses again. Excitement and unpredictability is back. When Mayo won the All-Ireland playing the most adventurous football imaginable, pressing the full backs and turning the opposition over high up the pitch, it was hard to see what needed to be interfered with.

The next vital change, envisaged by Gavin’s group, but not developed by Kevin’s, is to move from 3 up to 4 up. This will deal with all remaining core issues without damaging the chemistry, adventure or spectacle.

We are in the early stages of a delightful revolution. Players all over Ireland the world are learning the new game and revelling in it. Watching it has been a joy.

At this moment, the GAA only needs to ask itself one question: What would Jim do?