Identity crisis: Why has Gaelic football become hard to watch?

Connaire Mackin of Armagh gathers possession ahead of team-mates and Monaghan players, as referee Barry Cassidy looks on, during the Bank of Ireland Dr McKenna Cup match. Picture: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

When Dinny Allen worked in the bank, a colleague once made a prediction which proved very prescient. He told Allen that there would come a time when the commercial branch manager would be pushed aside and the accountants would come in and run the show.

“I sometimes feel,” said Allen in an interview in the Irish Examiner last year “that Gaelic football has gone that way.” 

Allen believes that the emphasis on statistics and strength and conditioning had unbalanced the sport. Safety is stifling adventure. S&C had taken precedence over individual skills, especially foot passing. Allen doesn’t enjoy watching Gaelic football anymore. Very little of the modern game piques his interest because the visual appeal is so limited for him.

“I wouldn’t dream of watching a football game now that didn’t involve Cork, or that wasn’t an All-Ireland final with Dublin and Kerry or whatever,” said Allen. “I could watch rugby now easier than Gaelic football.

“The way the game is played now most teams play the percentages. They hold onto the ball, play it back and forward across the field, and eventually one of the opposition defenders will slip or make a mistake, or lose their position, and the team in possession can get through for a point. It’s completely boring to me to look at those kinds of games.” 

Allen isn’t alone. 

In these pages on Thursday, former Donegal player Martin McHugh said that Gaelic football is at a “crossroads”, with defensive tactics ruining the enjoyment of the game for “98% or 99%” of people.

“It’s not a great spectacle,” said McHugh. “We want to see goals, we want to see enjoyment. That definitely has gone out of Gaelic football at the minute.”

McHugh feels that the game is moving towards a version of rugby league, which is line with Allen’s view of how so much controlled possession has sterilised the entertainment value.

On the other hand, none of this is new. Those arguments are decades old at this stage because the modern game has been making evolutionary steps which has constantly challenged how football is viewed. Instinct has been overridden by a more clinical thought process. Results are governed by percentages and precision.

Probably the standout statistic from last year’s championship was Dublin’s high turnover rate in their All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Mayo; Dublin turned over the ball a staggering 35 times.

Dublin’s number would normally be half that total but the detail of the trend of the match is revealing. When Dublin were in complete control for 30 minutes of the first half, they only turned over the ball on eight occasions. However, they turned over the ball 26 times in the second half and in extra-time.

That was a clear indication of a Dublin team running on empty. The wet and slippery conditions were another factor, but the majority of those turnovers were given up from the incessant heat of Mayo’s pressure.

What is even more interesting is the comparison between Dublin’s turnover rate and Kerry’s two weeks later against Tyrone, which also went to extra-time; Kerry also turned over the ball 35 times. The biggest difference between both figures though, was that 30 of those turnovers were forced in Kerry’s attacking third.

Apart from David Clifford’s injury withdrawal for extra-time, the turnover stat decided that game. Kerry had 17 more attacks (58-41) but their effectiveness with that possession was only 59% compared to Tyrone’s 71%.

Tyrone did turn the ball over on 27 occasions but those turnovers weren’t as high up the field, and they didn’t leave themselves as exposed as Kerry did when they coughed up possession. Two of Tyrone’s goals came from Kerry turnovers. The goals were decisive but mining 0-3 more than Kerry on turnovers was the clincher.

Tyrone had learned their lessons the hard way. During last year’s league, Tyrone had gone away from the running-defensive game patented by Mickey Harte and Gavin Devlin to more of a kicking and less strait-jacketed style, which certainly suited some of their best inside forwards.

Yet the league semi-final hiding from Kerry in Killarney was a wake-up call, especially around how that game impacted on their defensive shape, and the potential devastation the top teams could cause them on turnovers.

The results after that six-goal rout were stark; in five championship games, Tyrone conceded just two goals. That was obviously centred around a new defensive shape, but it was equally linked to a renewed attacking shape and style.

Heading into the final, Tyrone were still giving up more turnovers than they’d have liked, but they were still much better set up to defend them, and profit on the counter-attack.

Mayo did create the chances but their skill execution and finishing wasn’t as sharp as it needed to be in a contest always likely to be governed by turnovers. Tyrone scored 1-7 from turnovers compared to Mayo’s 0-6. Mayo turned over the ball 21 times. Tyrone turned it over only 16 times. Mayo players were mugged seven times in the tackle. Tyrone were only turned over three times in that manner.

Tyrone’s numbers in that game are even more interesting in the context of how some of the top football coaches view turnover-figures – 16 turnovers or less is seen as the magic number. When Dublin were at their peak, their turnover stats were roughly around that average.

Most of the focus in elite coaching now is based on that criteria. At Stevie Poacher’s January GAA Education clinic at St Joseph’s High School in Newry on Wednesday night, Marty Clarke and Poacher did a clinic on ‘Scenario Based Games Training’.

During one of his drills, Clarke spoke of how 60-65% of scores in football now come from turnovers. From his extensive experience in the AFL, Clarke mentioned coaches identifying that number in 2012 to be 80%.

In response, coaching was reconfigured. The structure of an AFL team was altered so that if the team was on the attack, certain individuals of a particular mindset and skillset were already starting to set up as if that attack was going to break down so that they were prepared for the counter-attack.

“It was so successful that in the AFL, they’ve had to change a raft of rules to open the game right up again,” said Clarke. “The game relied on that turnover. When teams were turning over possession, the opposition had a really solid structure and scores were almost halved.” 

Gaelic football has gone through a similar type of process, but with mixed results. The best teams still have that solid foundation to limit the damage on turnovers and counter-attacks. Yet the spectacle can become turgid and over-rigid when teams that have tried to copy those templates haven’t the players or the tactical smarts to carry it out.

Similar to the AFL, a raft of rule changes have tried to rebalance the game, often to the anger and frustration of Gaelic football coaches and players. The balance still isn’t right. Everybody wants more entertainment and, yet, in the midst of all those demands, the game is still more high scoring than ever.

In trying to widen this debate, is this more of a societal and social trending issue than just with just the game itself? With the average human attention span continually shrinking from over-exposure to smartphones and daily information overloads, people view sport differently now to even five years ago.

Unless a game is edge-of-the-seat stuff, many supporters no longer have the capacity to concentrate on a match for 70 minutes. Once the football turns into a chess-match, many have no interest in watching the pieces being moved around the board.

Whatever about the views of highly respected former players like Allen and McHugh, much of the beauty of the modern game is tied up in the tactical complexities and the nuanced problem-solving required for teams to be successful. Yet the majority of the viewing public only see the spectacle in black and white terms; they’re either entertained or they aren’t.

It’s not just how the game is played in terms of style, but at what temperature, which has added to football often feeling more sterile. The counter-argument is that football has never required more imagination and creativity to unlock the protective gates set up by the opposition.

One of the most noticeable aspects of the 2021 Gaelic football season, especially in the league, was the increased pressing higher up the field. Arrigo Sacchi, the legendary AC Milan and Italy coach once explained that pressing is not merely about running after the opponent, but about “controlling space” and, ultimately, controlling the game in the rival team’s mind. “Our pressing was psychological as much as physical,” Sacchi told Jonathon Wilson in his excellent book ‘Inverting the Pyramid’.

That’s never been truer in Gaelic football because every team now is seeking to invade and corrupt the opposition’s mind. A few years ago, one of the top football managers in the country revised his statistical analysis midway through the season, removing the category of a turnover originating from a kick-pass. He felt that players were becoming afraid to try and make that accurate kick-pass out of fear of getting hammered in the statistical analysis feedback for turning the ball over.

The demands of the modern game has spawned a tug-of-war between physical preparation/statistical analysis and skills development. Not having enough time in an amateur sport to cater for all areas is an obvious reason but increasing skill levels is a fundamental plank of increasing adventure within a set structure.

When Ashley Jones, the renowned S&C coach, both in Rugby League and Rugby Union, spoke at the GAA’s Coaching Conference in 2018, he talked about how skill is too often subjugated for strength and power.

“I think we place far too much emphasis on strength and conditioning, and nowhere near enough on skill development,” said Jones. “You’re never going to lose the game because you’re not strong enough; you will lose the game because you’re not skilful enough.” 

The top teams have the skill-set to execute the required skills in incredibly pressurised situations, especially in the attacking third. It may seem robotic but there is a skill in protecting possession and not turning over the ball. And the rewards are clear.

Last year, an excellent study on Gaelic football appeared in the International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport. Titled ‘Determinants of successful possession in elite Gaelic football,’ the paper produced by Ben McGuckin, Johnny Bradley, Mike Hughes, Peter O’Donoghue and Denise Martin provided the first comprehensive investigation of possession in a full senior championship season.

With data collected by analysing all 33 teams for the complete 2016 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship (64 games), the paper detailed how the average team had 48 possessions, but lost nearly half of these as turnovers (48%) and converted a third to scores. Winning teams had more possessions (49), but lost fewer turnovers (45%).

The average possessions now (where a team has control of the ball from the start to finish of that phase of play) has roughly dropped to around 45, which has placed a further premium on maximising possession. That has further changed the terms of engagement, but, as Allen discovered many years ago, the numbers have dictated the future.