Football's survival of the fittest is a race of adaptation

By John Harrington

‘Survival of the fittest’ is a concept describing how organisms that are best suited to their environment are more likely to survive.

It seems an apt one to apply to the 2025 All-Ireland Football Championships because the FRC rule enhancements have certainly created a new environment, and some teams are adapting to it more successfully than others.

Skills that were a dying art are now very much back in vogue because what had become a safety-first possession based sport has now become one that rewards risk, forces contests for possession in some instances, and encourages them in others.

High-fielding, take-ons, tackling, and shooting from distance are the new currency and if you’re short of change in those aspects of the game then you won’t be able to afford a ticket to the knock-out rounds.

Derry manager, Paddy Tally, has succinctly summed up the requirements of the ‘new game’.

“It’s really man on man and if you don't push out you're going to be punished by a two-pointer so I think the teams now that have really good man-markers in the defence are going to benefit,” said Tally.

“Plus, the teams that have really good forwards can take a man on and beat them in a 1v1, and at the minute that's going to be a real challenge to change the mindset firstly of the players that this is what the future looks like.

“You're starting to see the teams that are going to be there at the end of the year because now they're starting to show this game is going to open up.

“And we have to change, you can't sit back and look back and say we did this in the past or this is what we did in the past. It's not going to work in the future.

“This new game is going to determine a complete new skill set for defenders. The midfielders now are going to be much better in the air, you're going to have break ball specialists and you have to have forwards that are able to win their own ball, take the men on and score, and also outside shooters are now going to be really important.

“So, it's a completely new game, it really is in all its facets.”

It’ll be very interesting to see what sort of Derry turn up for their first match of the All-Ireland series against Armagh on Saturday.

Tally was a late appointment and Derry’s League campaign and Ulster SFC first round clash against Donegal was badly compromised by injuries.

But now they’ve had seven weeks to prepare for this match and have many players back from injury, including Anton Tohill, who has the profile to be a really important player for Derry under the new rules because of his physicality and ability to win aerial ball off kick-outs.

During the Allianz Football League 47% of kick-outs went beyond the 65m line and 67% of kick-outs were contested so having big ball winners in the middle third is now crucial.

The momentum of games now swing on a team’s ability or inability to win possession in the middle third from kick-outs, with a good recent case in point being the Leinster Final between Louth and Meath.

The big man in the middle is back with a bang, as was also emphatically illustrated by Dublin’s Peadar Ó Cofaigh Byrne against Galway last weekend.

“The kick-out is everything now,” says Wexford midfielder Liam Coleman. “There's stats out there now where if you can win your kick out it breeds 80% shots, so it's the platform.

“Other platforms with the old rules could be manipulated and you could take back control of a part of the game that you probably shouldn't necessarily have the quality to have that control, but you can't do that with the kick out now.”

The crashing of big bodies in the middle third under kick-outs and the contests for breaking ball might look chaotic at times, but the better teams bring method to the madness.

How to better your chances of winning that primary possession in the middle third of the field and how then to launch set-plays from there once you’ve secured the ball is now taking up more and more time of your average county team training session.

“It is and I'd say we'll see more coaching coming into it,” says Coleman.

“I would have done a bit of stuff with the Aussie Rules trials and stuff like that when I was coming up and it's a big part of their game.

“Rucking it's called and it would have been completely new but they do a lot of work where you have box drills, two boys in the middle, ball is thrown in, let it hit the ground, win your break.

“Even simple stuff like where lads keep their hands because if you're taking the ball in here (close to stomach), you're never going to get that back out again. Whereas in AFL, if you look at them when they were rucking, all of the time the ball is out here (in front of the body).

“I think there's lots of stuff like that that coaches will start to pick up on. And then obviously you said bodies, you can box out, but be smart with your off the ball. You're shielding lads, you're blocking lads, Galway do it very well.

“I think they identify who everybody else thinks is going to be a fetcher and usually the opposition will go to him and then they just leave another lad. They get a block and they have so many big men that they can probably do it like.

“But Céin D'Arcy, I think the Connacht semi-final against Roscommon he won about 6 or 7 kick out and he was coming from miles away. And I think if you look at Roscommon, they would have been trying to block off your Paul Conroys and your John Mahers who would have been identified as the fetchers.

“There's lots of ideas. Look, coaches will come up with a lot of smart stuff I think to try and get on top of this.”

Coaching innovation will certainly help give teams an edge, but in the dog eat dog world of the middle third when that ball breaks it’s likely to be won by the players with more mongrel in them.

Clare defender, Ikem Ugwueru feels very comfortable in this battle zone. His physique gives him an edge over most opponents, and his background in rugby (he played for Shannon in the AIL and was called up to the Munster Development Squad) is also an asset when a breaking ball is there to be won.

“When it comes to that dirty ball, it's about what fellas are the strongest, because they're the ones that will win the ball when it's 50-50,” says Ugwueru.

“It's almost like fighting for a ruck, basically. In rugby it's whoever gets their first and who is the strongest that wins the ruck. It's something similar now in football.

“Obviously high-fielding is something you also work on when you're part of a back three in rugby.

“From that sort of experience you'd also have an advantage with high fielding, or even just how to get up there to tap it down to someone else.

“Football and rugby, they cross over a lot. I feel like it has helped me with my transition to football.”

‘Explosive’ is the word that comes to mind when you watch Ugwueru play for Clare. His Instinct is to attack when he gets the ball in his hands, and he has a serious turn of pace and the ability to jink through tackles thanks to a side-step he worked hard to perfect during his rugby days.

His idol in this regard was the former New Zealand rugby player Nathan Milner-Skudder, so he studied videos of him in action and broke down the mechanics of his side-step until he was able to replicate it himself.

Until this year, taking on players in Gaelic football wasn’t always a risk worth taking because even if you beat the first man you could be quickly bottled up by a blanket defence, isolated, and stripped of possession.

Whereas now with the three up rule there’s more space to operate in and if you can successfully take a man on and beat him cleanly, then all sorts of opportunities are likely to open up for you.

“There are a lot more one v one match-ups now,” says Ugwueru. “Some guys don't really like that, and some fellas do like it.

“Obviously myself, I do like that. It's something that got me onto the team in the first place, my ability in those one v one situations. If I came up against someone one on one, I'd always get past them.

“This new game is all about isolating defenders. Because if you can take someone on one v one and get past them then you basically have the goals in front of you. That's something that's really come in with the new rules and all teams are trying to ways to use that to their advantage.

“The middle eight is crazy now. There's more running and a lot more space for one v ones when you're both attacking and defending. When it comes to defending I'd obviously back myself to defend anyone as well. The new rules are working well.”

But are they being exploited by any team as fully yet as they could be?

When even some of the best teams out there win clean possession in the middle third too often the players still seem conditioned to turn back towards their own goal and look for a safe pass sideways or backwards.

There is opportunity there if you get you head up and play the ball long and early, and that will be all the more the case when we get to the knock-out rounds in the wide expanses of Croke Park.

Kerry have shown the most aptitude so far for this approach, and it’s no coincidence that they’ve scored far more goals than any other team in the country this year (27 in 11 games).

This is something they’ve gone after. A good deal of focus in training has been put on fast transitions and getting the ball as quickly as possible into danger-men like David Clifford and Paul Geaney.

“Before you'd have to talk about having to break down a defence and you might have to go through very long periods of play to do that,” says Clifford.

“Whereas now you're looking to maybe score earlier in the play. So that's definitely something new.

“I think you're seeing across the country that some of the top corner-forwards are back playing well again and getting scores and getting on the end of scores and teams are back trying to find their forwards which I think from a purist level, I'm obviously biased, but the corner-forward taking a score and taking on his man, that's one of the most enjoyable parts of the game to watch.”

Scoring goals was obviously a lot more difficult to do in the era of blanket defences which is perhaps why there are so few forwards now who you would describe as natural goal-scorers.

After David Clifford and Con O’Callaghan, who you put in that bracket?

There should definitely be more goal-scoring opportunities under the new FRC rules if teams are brave enough to put boot to leather and kick directly into their inside forwards, but your average inside forward may not have the technique or confidence to take the goal-scoring opportunity on.

How else would you explain why so many players opt to hand-pass the ball over the bar and take an easy point rather than go for goal when there is a clear opportunity to do so?

Clifford’s instinct is to go for goal when there’s even a sniff of one, but what marks him out as something extra-special is his combination of technique and temperament that sees him finish clinically so often.

What advice would he give to young players, or even senior inter-county ones, about how to improve your chances of hitting the back of the net.

“It's interesting, I'm involved in a school team here and we were only talking about this last week just before we had a blitz,” says Clifford.

“We were talking about just trying to negate what actually does happen when you get a goalscoring opportunity.

“The first thing and the worst thing that happens when you go through on goal is you realise, Jesus, I could score a goal here. Then your heart-rate goes up and you get a bit more anxious.

“What that lends itself to is either rushing the shot or just lashing it. And you can lash it and score, of course you can, but I think if you can just try to negate that and calm yourself down, even take a play if you have the time, and I think the big thing is to just calm under that pressure.

“But, look, that's not easy either. It's not easy for young people and it's not easy for the likes of us either.

“I think if you go up through the ages in sport and you get to senior you start to think, Jesus, I'm not going to get half as much time on the ball here.

“But there's still time. If your movement is right you do get that bit of time. It's about trying to realise that and remove that from the pressure of it and allow yourself to take that play.

“I think that's what younger players struggle with the most maybe. They think they're under a bit more pressure than they are.”

The 2025 football championship is rewarding specific skills of the game that had become someone marginalised in recent years and the teams left in the Sam Maguire and Tailteann Cups are in a race to adapt to their new environment.

So far Kerry have a marked advantage when it comes to goalscoring. It’ll be interesting to see if that will be a telling one in the final reckoning.