This was always the biggest fear of The Mark.
When it was revealed that the GAA would introduce a mark for balls caught from a kickout beyond the 45′, it never really seemed like it was there for the purpose of encouraging high catching. Well, at least not as much as it was designed to force teams forward.
You could talk all day and you could bang your head against the wall all day trying to explain that the game isn’t as f**ked up as a few tweets and pundits make out. You can beg for reason, argue that this is just the natural order of life, that everything evolves and sport and tactics and ideas change but it wouldn’t matter.
People want to see the ball moving forward and that is that.
Funny that the promo videos for the mark show clips of men catching the ball… without the mark#GAA
— Conán Doherty (@ConanDoherty) November 30, 2016
So it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop at The Mark. 13 days since its introduction, the GAA’s standing committee on the playing rules are already talking about trying to stop the short kickout now. A method, ironically enough, that is used to get the ball in play a lot quicker than normal.
Jarlath Burns spoke with the Irish Times about a way of forcing ‘keepers to go longer.
“There is an argument that there is a slip of land on the field where it would be advisable to prohibit a player from receiving a kick-out if you wanted to make the ball go forward,” the Armagh native said.
“When the rule on kick-outs was changed the rule wasn’t correspondingly changed that the ball had to go forward 20 metres.
“It has been discussed and might be worth looking at. It wouldn’t take a lot to change that but it might have a positive implication.”
The mark is not just a waste of time, it is a damaging change, argues @conandohertyhttps://t.co/HNns6PzlK1
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) January 3, 2017
We’re harping back to what have become fictional old days now – when everything was better, or so we’re told.
They never hand-passed back then, they never kept possession, and ‘keepers never tried to pick out one of their players back then.
We have a standing committee on the playing rules that seem to forget that this is sport. They also seem to really not like this sport either.
What is the deal with all this rule change stuff? This one would be rediculous https://t.co/SyaXxMTV2N
— Paddy Bradley (@PaddyB14) January 13, 2017
