Two rules the Aussies got right

WATCHING the international series U-17 game between Ireland and Australia in Páirc Uí Chaoimh on Sunday, one contrast in styles really caught the eye.

This was the ease with which the visitors swept the ball off the ground, and the speed this injected into the game. And once more it begged the question why don't we have that same facility in gaelic football?

Apart from hurling, name me another field-game where the ball can be handled, but a clean pick-up off the ground isn't allowed. Maybe there is one, but I can't think of it.

I can see the logic for it in hurling, where the lift is a real skill and where a pick-up on the run is in fact easier, using the hurley as an extension of the arm. But in football?

The gaelic football pick-up bend over, foot under ball, inviting a wallop from behind while also slowing up the game is so obviously, achingly stupid, a brainless, witless, unthinking element of the game that cries out for change. And yet there it's been all these years, there it is, and there it will probably remain.

Another feature of the Aussie game was their magnificent high-fielding, rewarded of course with a 'mark', a free kick, each time. In gaelic football, where players are becoming fitter and space is becoming more congested, the high-fielder has for years now been penalised. He comes down from the clouds clutching his prize, only to be foiled, bottled up, either losing possession or conceding a free for over-holding.

I'm not saying we should ape the Aussie game and award the mark for every catch of a ball, but surely a clean catch from the kickout should be rewarded, the fielder protected?

Calling for those two simple changes the pick-up off the ground and a mark for fielding the kick-out isn't new, as people in the game have been calling for it for years. But leaving aside all those macro changes the GAA loves to indulge in, here are two simple little tweaks that could, and would, make a major difference in very quick time.

In Cork on Sunday I met Pat Daly, Head of Games Development at Croke Park. But for all the hearing he gets, he might as well still be back in Waterford teaching, and certainly he would be more useful. This is not to knock the man, far from it. Two years ago I heard him make a presentation to the European GAA board of a couple of CDs he was involved in developing for the GAA, one each on hurling and football, and it was really impressive.

The presentation and the CDs were as professional as anything I've ever come across. This guy, I felt, was a real mover, a real shaker and maker, one to watch.

Recently, Daly came out with a suggestion on revamping the whole GAA competitive set-up. Not suggestions, just one suggestion: one that looked at the totality, the club and county scene, the current sad set-up for the majority of GAA players, and came up with an alternative.

It wasn't something with which I would entirely agree, but it definitely made far more sense than the nonsense that currently exists. But it will get nowhere. Even if he is inside the GAA set-up, Pat's far-seeing ideas have about as much chance of advance as those you read here. Depressing really, but all the more reason for the fight to go on.