“Look, I’m happy enough.”
It has been a seminal year for Gaelic football following the introduction of the new changes, with laws such as the 3v3 and two-point rule having a drastic but mostly positive impact on the sport.
However, some have been critical of the changes, notably Meath boss Robbie Brennan, who said: “My own honest opinion, not with my Meath manager hat (on), is that they’ve lost the run of what we are trying to do.
“The whole idea here was to try protect the game and we’re not doing that – that’s not Gaelic football.
“You check a score at half-time of a game and it’s 17-0 to somebody, 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.”
One the other hand, many, including Kerry boss Jack O’Connor, have praised the changes.
The Kingdom manager, whose side have reached the NFL final after a 3-24 to 2-19 win over Galway, was mostly positive but singled out one rule as ‘unrealistic’.
He criticised the ‘solo and go’, which means players must hand the ball back to their opponent straight away if they have committed a foul on them, and are not allowed to foul them within 4m of the mark after they ‘solo and go’, or the free-kick will be advanced further up the field.
O’Connor said: “Look, I’m happy enough. I’m not one of the lads that was jumping on the bandwagon and giving out about the rules – I think the rules have helped the game. You can’t get everything right.
“Now, I’m still not too enthused by having to hand the ball back to a fella, and then he scoots off by you because you can’t touch him for four yards, I just think that’s a bit unrealistic. I can’t figure out where that’s coming from.
“Somewhere down the line in a big game there’s going to be controversy over that because some fella’s going to get the ball and run into the fella that handed it to him and who’s going to decide then?
“We had a situation above in Salthill the last day where Paul Murphy got sent off for an absolutely mysterious black card. A Galway man ran into him and threw himself down on the ground.
“Now I don’t want to make a big deal out of that and I’m not pointing fingers but I’m just saying, calls like that in a big Championship game are going to cause consternation and I just see that handing the ball back to a fella and whatever, it’s very unrealistic.”
