By John Harrington

What’s your view on how Gaelic football and hurling are now played at the very highest level?

Do you think the games are better than ever, or a pale shadow of what they were in years or even decades gone by?

Your answer to that question is probably index-linked to what age you are.

Scientific studies have shown that adults over the age of 30 have more memories from adolescence and early adulthood than from at any other time of their lives, before or after.

This phenomenon is known as the ‘reminiscence bump’ and can be applied to Gaelic games as easily as any other memory.

Chances are your most vivid memories of great matches you watched are from your adolescence and early adulthood, so you probably view that era of the game with rose-tinted glasses and have a jaundiced opinion on how the game has changed since depending on how old you are now.

“Much of how we view life relates to our youth and, similarly, our opinions on sport are typically forged from a time when we were actively involved,” says the GAA’s Chairperson of the Standing Committee for Playing Rules (SCPR), David Hassan.

“What games do we like? It's the games that we played. It was a great game when ‘we’ were playing is something we hear quite often.”

Hassan is all too aware of this phenomenon because he’s never short of advice, solicited or unsolicited, on how his committee could improve the inter-county game and return it to the sunny uplands of yore with a tweak of a rule here or the addition of another there.

In a way he can’t win because whenever the committee does propose a rule change a vocal cohort will find fault with it, but he’s philosophical about both sides of the coin.

“Isn't it great that people still have passionate opinions on our games?” he says. “I understand and welcome that. Equally, there must be an evidence-base for any proposed changes. You can't just say, look, I think we should do this, or we should do something else without being able to demonstrate that there is at least some evidence to support the assertion it will have the effect for which it was intended.

“People are quite protective about the games, but they also see them changing in front of their eyes.

“However, you need to be very careful of what sort of changes you make. Because if you just make rule changes without due consideration, you may end up with unintended consequences and, ultimately, a different game again. That's why I think generally you need to proceed with a degree of caution.

“It’s a very simple analysis to say that if you just change some rules, you’ll get a much better game. Rule changes can give rise to incremental change but teams – coaches and players – ultimately gravitate back to the type of game they want to play. As such, it's not just a rules issue. The state of the game is a systemic outcome that has to do with players, coaches, referees, and rules.

Before Hassan’s committee proposes rule-changes they feel might improve the games, they quite rightly make a big effort to establish exactly what sort of games we now have in the first place.

An in-depth analysis of the 2022 Gaelic football and hurling championships highlighted some obvious positives.

The 36.9 scores per game in the football championship was the third highest on record, while the Tailteann Cup averaged 37.1 scores per game.

Goals per game increased during the 2022 football championship with 2.6 per game (the highest since 1989 when it was 2.7). There were also 2.6 goals per game scored during the Tailteann Cup.

In hurling, the 53.5 scores per game in the 2022 championship is the second highest ever seen in championship hurling. The last six years of Championship hurling have been the top six scoring seasons of all time, and the 66 scores we saw in the 2021 and 2022 All-Ireland Finals are the joint highest ever in Finals.

The rate of fouling was reduced in both championships. There was an average of 33 per game in the football championship, which was five less than in 2021.

Cynical fouling in the football championship (Deliberate pulling down of an opponent, deliberate tripping and body collide with an opponent after the ball is played away or for the purpose of taking him out of the movement of play) was down from 1.5 per game to 0.6 per game in 2022.

In hurling, disruptive fouls (deliberate pulling down of an opponent, deliberate tripping, and the careless use of the hurley) were down to 0.4 per game compared to the average of 1.4 in 2020.

Fouls inside the ‘goal scoring zone’ continued to decrease in 2022. 10% of total fouls occurred inside this zone in 2022 which is the lowest on record.

Clearly, the sinbin/penalty deterrent for cynical fouls in the scoring zone drafted by the SCPR is having a positive impact here.

More scores and less fouls are positive developments few could quibble with, but there’s one obvious trend that won’t be to everyone’s liking – the steadily increasing extent to which Gaelic football has become a possession-based sport.

This week we published a statistical analysis of the 1992, 2002, 2012, and 2022 All-Ireland Football Finals on GAA.ie that highlighted this development.

A statistical analysis of the 2022 All-Ireland football championship also showed how teams are becoming increasingly careful with possession.

The average number of hand-passes per game was at an all-time average high of 413 per match, while 84 per cent of foot-passes were uncontested because players do not want to risk getting turned over.

Statistics also highlight how possession has become more greatly prized at the highest level of hurling.

In 2022 there were five less stick passes and six extra hand-passes on average per game compared to 2021.

Passes back to the goalkeeper continued to increase, they’re now at 6.7 per game compared to 2.9 as recently as 2019. Some 44 per cent of puck-outs were uncontested in this year’s championship compared to 36 per cent in 2019.

A total of 30 per cent of all puck-outs in 2022 were struck to someone inside the defensive 45 metre line, which is twice as many as the figure for 2016.

Some will reflexively say that rule changes are now required to make it more difficult for teams to hold onto possession and to encourage more contests for the ball, but Hassan doesn’t believe it’s that simple.

“I accept the argument that currently games are played within the rules that are there, but, equally, the reality is the actual style of football and hurling played will be largely a result of whatever way the coaches and players want their teams to play,” he said.

“Currently coaches and indeed players want the ball to be kept out of contest for the most part. If you look at the statistics and assume that hand-passing, broadly speaking, is an uncontested aspect of the game, and you add that to the number of uncontested kicks, which is 84 per cent of them, you end up with 96 per cent of all passes in Gaelic football currently being uncontested.

“There's been an exponential rise in the number of passes.

“When it comes to football, you've now got a passing and possession game. It's fair to conclude that the main reason why we've got that is precisely because players are now able to play that type of game.

“It's no surprise either that hurling is following the same trajectory as football in that regard. Coaches clearly prioritise having possession of the ball and there's good reason for that because it’s currently only around 40 per cent of the time that the ball is in play.

“You take 40 per cent of 79 minutes (the average length of time of a current inter-county game) and then, broadly speaking, half that again for when your team has the ball, it's a relatively short space of time that your team has possession of the ball in order to secure the scores required to win the match in question.”

Let’s put statistics aside for one minute and just trust our eyes. Compare the modern games of inter-county football and hurling with the equivalent of as recently as 10 years ago and what’s the biggest difference?

Clearly, it’s the physical conditioning of the players which has gone to a new level entirely.

That allows them to hold onto possession for longer by repeatedly running with it rather than kicking/striking it. It also means they have the endurance to make repeated support runs and offer themselves as outlets for a short pass, which also makes a possession-based game easier to execute.

“Yes, it’s been driven essentially by the athleticism of the players,” says Hassan. “I understand that people want the ball in contest because that's exciting and it's also one of the things we have traditionally valued about our games.

“But, equally, one of the reasons why the ball isn't in contest or isn't being kicked or played as much into contest as it might have been in the past is because essentially the players don't need to kick or play it in that way anymore. They're fit enough to run the same distance that maybe 25 years ago the ball would have been kicked over and to do this on a repeated basis.

“So, if you actually look beyond this idea that everything is ‘bad’ and aim to change the narrative and say, firstly, these are remarkable athletic performances from amateur players, and, secondly, consider the level that modern coaching has reached and, particularly, the tactical evolution of our games, it is largely unprecedented.”

One of the most common suggestions aired for increasing the number of contests for possession in Gaelic football is to follow the example of basketball whereby a team cannot pass the ball backwards into their own half if they cross the half-way line.

If a similar rule was applied to Gaelic football using the opposition ’65 as the line of no return, would it have a big impact on the game?

The statistics from this year’s championship would suggest not. Just eight per cent of attacks that crossed the opposition’s ’65 went back across it again in the reverse direction.

Rule changes might not be a silver bullet for perceived ills, but many have impacted the games positively by popular acclaim, such as the kick-out mark in Gaelic football and the crack-down on cynical fouling in goals-scoring positions to name just two.

The SCPR intends to continue with a period of experimentation in Higher Education games early next year to see what potential rule changes might or might not encourage more contests for possession.

The reality though is that team sports evolve tactically over time and it’s a no-brainer for coaches to prioritise possession, so expect that trend to continue.

That won’t be to the liking for those with reminiscence bumps of a time when Gaelic football was a catch and kick game and hurlers played the ball first time on the ground, but the games have changed.

They’re faster and more high scoring than ever before, and tactically astute coaches and players will play the percentages to give their teams the best chance of winning.