Jim Gavin and his Football Review Committee did great work when they introduced big changes to the rules of Galway football in 2024. Gavin has now moved on and former Mayo footballer and manager Kevin McStay has taken up the baton to continue looking at the football rules. The Expert Advisory Group has been together since the GAA Congress earlier this year when GAA president Jarlath Burns appointed McStay as lead to continue to monitor the game in the wake of the wide-ranging changes over the previous two years.
It’s a smaller group, and McStay is at pains to stress that their work is more “polishing” and “tweaking” what is there already, rather than “driving a truck” through the game as the FRC had done so successfully. However, some of the trials that will temporarily reshape the third-level games are ambitious. The main points include a ban on fisted or open-handpassed points, unless the ball is in flight, a limit on consecutive handpasses to three, a four-point goal return to requirement for kick-outs to go just 13 meters, not beyond the 40-meter arc the establishment of a “back-court” provision, where the ball cannot cross back over the halfway line, unless deflected.
The new group will use the third-level league games next spring to assess these and other suggested changes like: six substitutes instead of five, a 50-meter advancement for a free when a mark is impeded, an extension of the 40-meter arc to the end-line and the alignment of all 50-meter advanced frees to the 13-meter line. Currently a breach is at the 20-meter line, sideline dissent is at the 13-meter line. McStay’s EAG group also includes former inter-county stars Maurice Fitzgerald, Conor McManus, John Tobin, referee David Coldrick and two former members of the FRC Séamus Kenny and Pat Doherty, Not everyone agrees that the GAA should be tampering with the football rules so soon.
Former Kerry star Tomás O Sé, who is the current Kerry under-20 manager said: “Could we not just leave it and let teams get to grips with what is there already. There is no need at all for this. We had the best championship in years and we are talking about changes again.”
