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Irish Times
11 hours ago
- Sport
- Irish Times
The GAA's sceptical relationship with time keeping is not a new phenomenon
At last November's special congress, Jim Gavin's Football Review Committee (FRC) managed to have all of its provisions accepted for implementation in the 2025 season. It was a remarkable feat of persuasion in less than a year. Neither were there any cliffhangers. In fact, the least enthusiastically received idea was that of the match clock, which attracted the support of a relatively restrained 74 per cent of delegates. Since its introduction, it has been one of the most troublesome amendments. It triggered concerns that it would prove too expensive or too complicated in the requirement that it be synced with the time displays on broadcast coverage. A countdown clock was accepted in women's football in the mid-1990s. Following its largely seamless application, it wasn't long prompting the men's game to wonder if it might it be a worthwhile adoption. READ MORE Twice the idea, having been floated at congress, came to nothing – once defeated and the next time, accepted but never introduced, again for logistical reasons, after being trialled in third-level matches. Since 2015, things have changed. The whole area of time was reviewed and in response to rising concern about gamesmanship, a new set of guidelines were issued to referees. One of the main sources of disquiet was the use of strategic substitutions to run down the clock. It was accordingly decided that 20 seconds should be added for every replacement brought on during a match. That is why there is apparently more time in the second half of matches than in the first: it's when the bulk of the substitutions are made. Other issues to come under scrutiny were goalkeepers coming up the field for free-kicks and pauses for Hawk-Eye determinations. Eventually, the FRC motions 46 and 47, providing for clock/hooter use and the hand-signal protocol for referees to stop and resume play were passed and implemented – at least in broadcast matches. [ Ciarán Murphy: Keeping cool in front of goal is key to landing All-Ireland Opens in new window ] The GAA's apparently sceptical relationship with time keeping is not a new phenomenon. It is all of 87 years since an initial attempt was made to mechanise time keeping and remove it from a referee's duties. Maurice Bogue was the inventor of the eponymous Bogue Clock, a pioneering idea to display time at GAA grounds, which would be stopped and restarted as the referee indicated. The point was to ensure that a full hour would be played in matches. Display was on a large clock face with Roman numerals – according to one report, 'like a giant stopwatch' – and it was first used in a challenge match between Louth and Mayo in May 1938 at the Gaelic Grounds in Drogheda. Later that year, it was used to keep time at a league match between Louth and Meath, which ended in a draw. Attempts to incorporate the clock into the rule book in 1939 and 1940 were not successful and although Bogue, a businessman and inventor, who lived in Drogheda, was prepared to mount exhibitions of his timepiece in various grounds across the country, the matter did not return to congress for 10 years. In 1950, delegates declined to introduce the clock but did stipulate that it should be trialled the following year and evidence of that can be seen in PD Mehigan's report of the Railway Cup semi-finals on February 19th, 1951. 'The advent of the Bogue Clock as timekeeper instead of the referee was on trial and pleased the public, who were able to follow the different stages of the game,' the report said. At congress in 1951, the idea of the clock was buried despite the range of enthusiasts for the prospect of referees being able to concentrate on officiating rather than also keeping time. A report in The Irish Times Pictorial, a weekly published between 1942-1958, reflected on the fate of the Bogue Clock at congress. 'Opinions were divided on the wisdom of having a clock at all in Croke Park. The system of leaving the referee to keep an eye on the time and on the play, while making up broken time, appears to be the popular idea,' the report said. 'In support of the system [status quo] a Cork delegate said that Cork had lost five All-Irelands by a point, in each case near time and had never questioned the referee's ability to play full time.' This may have been in solidarity with the county's Paddy O'Keeffe, who was general secretary of the GAA at the time, and who had expressed the view that discussions on the Bogue Clock might be seen as an unwelcome reflection on the association's referees.
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Sport
- Irish Times
Gerry Thornley: The true story of Leinster in the 2020s is one of remarkable success
In the decade between 2012 and 2021, Mayo reached six All-Ireland football finals and lost them all – three of them by a single point and one of those after a replay. Including the draw in 2016, their average losing margin in seven finals was less than 2.5 points. Some people apparently regard them as chokers, which is a joke really. As John Barclay said on Premier Sports last Saturday, losing a semi-final is possibly preferable to doing so in a final. In truth, for that Mayo team to keep picking themselves up off the canvas after each bitter disappointment in order to start all over again in pursuit of their holy grail shows incredible strength of character. It would be so much easier to give up and walk away. Three of their six losses were against Jim Gavin's six-in-a-row side, widely considered to be the best Gaelic football team of all time. Nobody pushed that Dubs side harder than Mayo. No other county came close. Yet they received nothing like the same scrutiny. By comparison, they were all given a free pass. Yes, you can see where this is going. At the recent Rugby Players of Ireland awards ceremony, Andrew Trimble, in his inimitably laconic way, asked Mayo native Caelan Doris if he had passed on the curse. To which Doris replied he has actually won at Croke Park. READ MORE Perhaps there is a slight irony in Doris, Jack Conan and Cian Healy finally lifting Leinster's first trophy in four seasons there last Saturday after an emphatic 32-7 win over the Bulls . Again, though, some jokers still regard this Leinster side as chokers. This is because, since their 2021 Pro14 success behind closed doors, Leinster had lost three successive Champions Cup finals against La Rochelle, in Marseille and Dublin, and Toulouse, in London. In May, they added a Champions Cup semi-final defeat to Northampton at home. The province had also lost three successive URC semi-finals. The margins in those seven defeats were: three points, one, nine (having finished level after 80 minutes), three, one, one and five. In every one, the game was in the balance until the last play of the 80 minutes. Leinster's Johnny Sexton talks to referee Wayne Barnes during the 2022 Champions Cup final. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho Leinster certainly haven't been awash with luck. They'd have won the 2022 Champions Cup final in Marseille but for Wayne Barnes penalising Ross Molony in the jackal on the premise that Michael Alaalatoa hadn't rolled away. No amount of replays will convince Molony or this columnist that the Leinster prop hadn't sufficiently manoeuvred himself out of the way. One final where the 'choker' tag might have some validation is the 27-26 loss to La Rochelle in 2023. Leinster had led by 17-0 and then 23-7, but they didn't score a point after the 46th minute. That statistic and zero second-half passes between the entire backline outside Ross Byrne was evidence of how they stopped playing. Still, that was Ronan O'Gara's La Rochelle team at their irresistible best. They deserved credit for the comeback, which had shades of Leinster's fightback in the 2011 decider against Northampton. In the pulsating 2024 final at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Leinster came within a whisker of sealing a win in the 80th minute via Ciarán Frawley's drop goal attempt. He nailed two against the Springboks in Durban a few weeks later. Again, they received hardly any of the 50-50 calls from Matthew Carley, most notably when identical offences by Anthony Jelonch and James Lowe – in slapping the ball over the touchline – received contrasting punishments. Toulouse were widely acclaimed as the best French club side ever, with the sport's greatest player as their captain and talisman. Further putting that epic 2024 final in London into perspective, five weeks later Toulouse beat Bordeaux Bègles by 59-3 at the Stade de France, a record winning margin for a final in the history of the French Championship. Only one other team has reached three successive Champions Cup finals but, naturally, Leinster receive little or no credit for that, or for much else. In the last four seasons they've won 91 matches, drawn one and lost 20. In the Champions Cup they've won 27 out of 31 games. They've put 40 on Toulouse (twice) and La Rochelle, whom they've also beaten twice in a row away. They've entertained royally, played some thrilling rugby and scored oodles of great tries. Leinster's Andrew Porter celebrates with champagne in the dressing room after the URC final. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho In the aftermath of Saturday's final, head coach Leo Cullen – who might well have considered stepping down had Leinster not won – wondered aloud as to what constitutes success or failure. The line between them is not so blurred anymore, and in Leinster's case it is seemingly judged solely by whether they win the Champions Cup or not. Hence, the one that got away is this year's defeat against Northampton, one of only two semi-final losses suffered by home sides in the last decade. As Tommy O'Brien admitted – although Ryan Baird refutes the theory utterly – Leinster were 'flat' in their ensuing games but rediscovered their buzz in the last fortnight when convincingly dethroning the champions and then their nearest challengers, who beat them in last season's semi-finals. That still doesn't completely ease the pain from that Northampton defeat, which has been deemed a non-show but was perhaps more accurately a delayed show in what was one of the games of the season. It must still bemuse Leinster as much as us, and in the absence of a Antoine Dupont-less Toulouse, is compounded by Bordeaux Bègles awaiting in a Cardiff final and thoughts of what might have been. Ultimately, though, Leinster won one of only two trophies on offer and reached the semi-final of the other. They also won 25 of 28 matches. They earned a half-dozen home play-off ties to further swell the coffers. They provided a record dozen Lions. Season ticket holders are up to 15,000 ahead of returning to an expanded RDS. With any other club, region or province, that would be considered a successful season. Anyone other than Leinster. The URC has never been harder to win and yet no team has ever been more deserving champions. Maybe it's time they cut themselves a little slack. And maybe it's time we did too. gerrythornley@
Irish Daily Mirror
4 days ago
- Sport
- Irish Daily Mirror
Johnny Sexton on Jim Gavin, Robbie Keane, two worlds away from rugby
The UK's angry brigade - rugby branch - are already up in arms about the amount of Irish coaches and players going to the Lions trip to Australia. A tour that has a sweet sixteen-load of Ireland players, Andy Farrell as Head coach, Simon Easterby, John Forgarty, Andrew Goodman and Johnny Sexton as Assistant have we got news for them; Sexton is thinking about bringing a bit of Jim Gavin and Robbie Keane with him too!As it is Sexton, following retiring from playing rugby for Leinster and Ireland since around the time man invented fire and following having taken a sabbatical to work in the business world, is back in a from Andy Farrell offering him the role of Out-Half Minder/Kicking Advisor for the nine-game Lions tour that opens with a game against Argentina this Friday at the out Sexton hasn't really been away, he was just taking a break and is back with friends now Monica and Chandler and Andy, Simon, Tadgh, Jamison, Jack, JR, James, Garry and so time away ought to have been interesting as well, getting to see former Dubs coach Jim Gavin's business view and talking to Robbie Keane about his there is the roadshow all the podcasts have missed out on, Gavin-Sexton-Keane while, apparently, there is no truth in the rumour Sky Sports are going to divert Roy,,,.Says Sexton of sampling the cut-throat world of the business boardroom, of carrying the knife in your briefcase and not in your lionskin shirt:'It was a great experience for me, it kinda solidified what I thought about high performance really, whether you are in business or in sport."That what you do every day is every (itals) thing (itals), the standards that you set, all these things that Joe (Schmidt) taught us when he came to Leinster, what was it, all those 15 years ago."That was solidified further over the last year and a half, and so from that regard, sometimes if you take a step back from the environment and you are not in it, sometimes you can actually see a lot of wider things."And then when you get back in you can say I matched up or that I was wrong there and it gives you a different perception of it. I learned a lot, I threw myself into it."The time away from the training ground has added to his perception of Jim Gavin's thinking, the most successful modern-day GAA coach/manager."I have met him, yes, a very impressive guy. We have had him in over the years with the Ireland team, I don't think we had him in with the Leinster team and you could see why he was so successful. He is very similar to Joe actually and we took a lot from his visits.'Overall, it was a great experience for me. I learned a lot, I threw myself into it, I was in it for the long haul in my own mind. Maybe I was tricking myself, I'm not sure."But, having made the decision now, I'm kind of like, I feel I'm where I should be in terms of in sport, in rugby, and loving being part of it and trying to challenge myself in here now."Robbie Keane is from a different world, a different sport to Gavin and Sexton, and he left a positive impression.'I did get a chance to talk to him, yeah. He's a good character, Robbie. Talking about his different experiences, in Israel and Hungary. "He's thriving, isn't he? He's loving it. Picking his brain on certain things he's doing there but most of the time I spent laughing at him. He's just a great character, great story-teller. A lot of fun, yeah."
Irish Times
13-06-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
Malachy Clerkin: Calling the football championship wide open is a polite way of saying every team is flawed
And so we get down to business. A football championship that has already provided more watchable games in a couple of months than in the previous two years combined will now shift gear. For all the good vibes around football in 2025, winning and losing were kind of abstract concepts up to this point, consequences a sort of far-off threat/promise. Not any more. From here on out, you either do the thing or you spend the next seven months annoyed that you did not do the thing. Of the 16 teams lining out this weekend, only Armagh have nothing immediate to play for. Win, lose or draw, they will top Group 4 and are guaranteed an All-Ireland quarter-final place. But even at that, knocking Galway out would be a delicious way to round off the group stage. Regular as clockwork, the moaning has begun. You know it, you hear it, you can feel it in the air. 'Why?' trill the voices. Why are we ditching this format to bring in yet another one next year? Typical GAA, getting rid of something just when it starts to get good. READ MORE To which the only sane response is, Jesus effing wept! Are people's memories really this short? Have they genuinely forgotten the reasons this stuff is changing? We surely can't be that easily distracted. Can we? Maybe we can. Maybe this is the ultimate tribute to the Football Review Committee . Jim Gavin is big on KPIs – or, Key Performance Indicators for the people whose lives are mercifully free of LinkedIn's assault on the language. But even he couldn't have imagined that one of the markers of the effect of the new football rules would be to make people forget the flaws in the format of the championship. It's worth restating, just for clarity. This is still 24 games to get rid of just four teams. It's still the case that some counties who have lost three matches aren't yet gone from the championship. It's still the case that some of them might not even need to win this weekend to progress. Since the championship began at the start of April, the collective record of Derry , Clare , Roscommon and Cork reads: Played 15, Won 3, Drew 2, Lost 10. All three wins came against Division Four opposition. Yet they're all still nominally in with a shout. [ All-Ireland Series permutations: All to play for as group stage comes to close Opens in new window ] The Rossies have posted one victory since the start of the championship, a 19-point win over London, who went on to be one of only two teams not to win a game in the Tailteann Cup. Yet as long as they get at least a draw against Cork in Portlaoise, Davy Burke's side will go through to the last 12. Derry sit alongside London and Waterford as the only teams in the country not to win a game in the 2025 championship so far. Yet they can feasibly still go through even if they lose to Dublin in Newry. It's unlikely, yes. But it's far from impossible. If the Dubs beat them by one and Armagh beat Galway by five, Paddy Tally's side sails on. Three defeats and one draw from four games and they would be just as alive in the championship as Armagh are. Armagh's Rian O'Neill celebrates a two point score with Óisín Conaty against Dublin in Round 2 of the championship earlier this month. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho So when someone asks you why the silly, meddling GAA had to go messing around with the format again, this is why. It's football sponsored by Hotel California – teams are checking out all over the country but still finding it very hard to leave. That won't happen next year. As soon as you lose two games in the 2026 Sam Maguire, your season is done. As for why it feels like it has worked better this year than before, the reasons are pretty simple. The first, plainly, is the new rules. It was bad enough that the championship structure was full of holes under the old rules – actually sitting through the games made it so much worse. Whatever you like or don't like about the new rules, everyone can see that the sport is more engaging now. The lulls and longueurs in which to contemplate the pointlessness of the format just aren't there any more. But there's a deeper and far more obvious reason too – and one that Gavin is blue in the face telling people that no changes to the playing rules or format will ever be able to affect. The field is flatter now than it's been in ages, maybe even in generations. Dublin are sixth in the betting. The next three after them are Monaghan, Mayo and Derry. So, essentially, you have nine teams that can either win the All-Ireland or be the spoke in the wheel for one of the others. When was that ever the case before? You probably have to go back to something like 1999. Galway were defending All-Ireland champions that year but got beaten by Mayo in the Connacht final, who then lost the All-Ireland semi-final to Cork. Cork were league champions but hadn't beaten Kerry in Munster in four years. Armagh won Ulster despite starting out fifth in the betting behind Donegal, Derry, Down and Tyrone. Kildare were defending Leinster champions but couldn't beat Offaly, who couldn't beat Meath. Dublin couldn't either. It all washed out as a Meath v Cork All-Ireland final, with anything up to half a dozen counties watching on, full sure they were a match for either of them. This year has precisely that kind of feel. When people say the championship is wide open, they're being polite. What they really mean is that every team is flawed and looks beatable. Kerry are favourites but haven't been tested. Armagh are probably the best around, but nobody's scared of them. Everyone else has lost at least once already. When the landscape looks like that, the format doesn't matter a damn. Just throw the ball up and get on with it.
RTÉ News
07-06-2025
- Sport
- RTÉ News
FRC housekeeping can help preserve classic championship
The adage "perfect is the enemy of good" was surely somewhere in Jim Gavin's Football Review Commitee philosophy. When they set about this task, getting everything perfect the first time was always going to be impossible. Attempting to do so would have been a huge barrier to the breakneck speed with which they executed their mission. For someone as detail orientated as Jim Gavin appears to be, this allowance for imperfection and adapting as things develop could not have rested particularly easy. To minimise issues, the group were exhaustive in their attempt to reason out every change and the myriad of knock-on consequences. While the continuous tweaks during the Allianz League frustrated many, their overall success was remarkable and allowed them to put their rule amending pens away ahead of the championship. Since then we have all got to sit back and enjoy the results of the group's labours. Drawing a direct cause and effect between the enhancements and the great championship we are experiencing to date is open to accusations of bias. The fact that the championship is more open, that there were great games under the previous rules, and that teams are simply too inexperienced with the new rules to wrestle the game back under their control means that a definitive conclusion on the direct impact of the rules cannot be drawn. Even the greatest contrarian would have to admit though that the coincidence of the rule changes and the quality of games we are seeing is notable. The exciting thing is that we are only reaching the stage where, over the past 10 to 20 years, the good football usually starts. And this is the thing. We are also reaching the stage where the line in the history books are completed, a player's entire career finds their defining moment and supporters see their dreams come through. My biggest dread over the next seven weeks is that a quirk in the rules becomes the decisive event. Now, for me, is the perfect moment, between group stage and knockout games, for the FRC to do a bit of housekeeping. There is much that can and will be debated as the game evolves under the new rules over the coming years, but there are things that have become evident and need to be tidied up as the outworkings which we have seen are presumably going against what the FRC envisaged. My biggest dread over the next seven weeks is that a quirk in the rules becomes the decisive event Most importantly for me is the rule that allows a touch by an opposition player to decrease a two-point effort's value to one. Why is this very minor and infrequent rule the most important? The likelihood for it being game-deciding is perhaps greater than any other rule. As we know, big games have a habit of coming down to the wire. In these scenarios, and with the hooter game in particular, teams know exactly what they or their opponent need. If a player, at a critical moment, goes for that two-pointer and scores it, why should it be halved in value because an opposition player touches the ball? I believe this rule came in to prevent the scenario that if a ball was dropping close to the crossbar and players jumped to assist/prevent it travelling over, it may be difficult to ascertain if it was touched and by whom or, more critically, if the touch was necessary for the ball to make it over the bar. This type of thing is evidence of the extent to which the FRC went into the minutiae to try to avoid potential problems with its various enhancements. The problem here is that in ensuring their rule didn't fall foul of the extremely rare scenario described, they ended up making it feel unnaturally complicated. If a touch is required to make a shot travel over the bar, then it should not be counted as a two-pointer. If an opposition player attempts to stop a shot but it still travels over, then it should count. Moving onto the solo and go, that almost universally liked enhancement - albeit, ironically one which reduces kick passing and increasing control of possession - is almost too advantageous in some scenarios. When a player can throw it out of the immediate location of the free kick to a team-mate taking it at full speed it is a huge advantage. We wouldn't allow a free-kick to be taken so loosely in relation to the position of the foul. Similarly, the kick-out mark is having overly advantageous impact. A theme to both of these is the massive impact of a 50m penalty - and the two-pointer option that carries - with any infringement against them. In combination, that gives them a game-defining ability. Like it or not and trust me, this isn't just the Tyrone in me coming out, that means every team will be looking at playing 'smart' in such moments and drawing those 50m penalties. The thought of an All-Ireland final being decided on such would be a terrible end to a great championship. The FRC has held its counsel for several weeks now, but I believe it's time to see Jim and his crew break out their pens for a bit of light editing. This championship to date has been the best in 20 years. The rules have been central to that in my opinion. But, while they have defined it, it would be a real pity if they end up deciding it.
