Comeback kids: It's football, Jim, but not as we know it

Elite football games now swinging more than hurling. 

NOTHING BUT NET: Meath manager Robbie Brennan. celebrating after his side's victory over Westmeath,  described the new-look game as 'outdoor basketball'. Pic Tyler Miller/Sportsfile

Gaelic football is many great things but for comebacks hurling has the patent rights.

Cork transforming a seven-point deficit to beat Galway by three in the 1990 All-Ireland final. Tipperary pulling off an unimaginable 13-point turnaround against Cork in the Munster final the next year.

In recent times, Waterford doing the same to Kilkenny to reach the 2020 All-Ireland final and in the following season’s Munster decider Limerick alchemising a 10-point half-time deficit into a five-point victory over Tipperary.

Sure, football has had its memorable fightbacks – Mayo v Dublin in 2006 and Wexford v Meath in 2008 will come to mind – but by virtue of scores coming easier in hurling it doesn’t compare to the scales climbed in the smaller ball code.

That was until this season’s Allianz Football League where the experimental rules incorporated have made telling contributions to incredible turnarounds. In half of the 20 Division 1 games played so far, there has been a turnaround of 10 points or more.

In living memory, football matches have never oscillated as wildly as this and certainly not to the point that they have overtaken the largest swings in hurling’s top flight, averaging almost a point more thus far this year.

As scores go up, so too will the propensity of leads to be exchanged and two-pointers, all 87 of them scored so far in Division 1, have contributed significantly. The average score aggregate per game in Division 1 is 38.55 points. Even without the two-pointers, the average of 34.2 points is over a point up on last year’s 33 and nine on the 2022 and ’23 leagues.

The windy conditions have obviously played their part too and the fightbacks only reflects part of how far teams are stretching ahead. For instance, it doesn’t consider the 17 points Galway put up against Donegal in Salthill before the visitors scored or how Armagh in two games have propelled themselves into 15-point leads.

No wonder managers are frustrated, even the winning ones. If Robbie Brennan and Kieran McGeeney had lost their respective games this past weekend, their cutting remarks about the new rules would be classed as sour grapes but they didn’t, Brennan’s Meath eclipsing Westmeath with a did-it-really-beat-the-hooter goal and Armagh holding off Dublin.

“The whole idea here was to try to protect the game and we’re not doing that – that’s not Gaelic football,” Brennan lamented. “You check a score at half-time of a game and it’s 17-0 to somebody (sic, Galway led Donegal 0-17 to 0-1 at half-time). It’s a joke, to be honest with you the way it’s gone.

“It’s a mix of outdoor basketball with a breeze, soccer style defending with 11 behind the ball in zonal stuff, and a bit of rugby thrown in for a few scrums around the middle. I don’t like it, it’s not Gaelic football.” 

McGeeney’s analysis of the changes associated with the goalkeeper was just as withering. “Now we're told when you pass the ball back into the square, it's only one pass. So you're only allowed one pass. And next, we'll be told you're only allowed to do it when the sun shines into the east.” 

On RTÉ’s League Sunday,  Dublin manager Dessie Farrell was about to expand on his issue with the time afforded to goalkeepers for kick-outs but then checked himself perhaps mindful that his predecessor Jim Gavin is chairing the Football Review Committee.

Farrell has seen his Dublin team lead by 13 points v Derry and fall behind by 12 to Kerry and 15 to Armagh. What might his message be to Gavin in private? It’s football, Jim, but not as we know it.