Malachy Clerkin: The FRC’s dissent proposals will change Gaelic football as much as the gameplay ones

At the launch of the FRC’s interim report on Thursday morning, a few of us gathered around Jim Gavin in Croke Park after his hour-long presentation. The interim report is a hefty piece of work, running to 208 pages and weighing in at just over a kilo (1,010 grammes to be exact – we lobbed it on the kitchen scales when we got home).
There was a small pile of them sitting on a windowpane and on closer inspection, you could see that members of the committee had signed the inside covers.
There they were, one name under the other, like signatories to a proclamation. The GAA has produced endless rainforests of reports down the years – it’s hard to imagine too many of them ever inspired their authors to give it the full Pearse-Connolly-MacDonagh treatment at the launch.
However seriously you think the FRC are taking this process, you’re probably lowballing it. Nothing here is fly-by-night. Everything is aimed at leaving a legacy, one that lasts down the decades. If it does, this will be readily identifiable as the moment when someone shouted stop.
[ Jim Gavin says changes football review committee is proposing have potential to reinvigorate Gaelic footballOpens in new window ]
The headline stuff is what anyone tuning into the televised games next weekend will notice straight off the bat. The three players staying in the opposing half, the solo-and-go option from frees, the limit on passes to the goalkeepers, the two-point scoring arc. These are the most obvious changes and the intended appeal of them is that you watch the matches and still recognise it as Gaelic football. Just, they hope, a more enjoyable version of the game.
But the committee’s scope is broad – and maybe broader than most people have assumed. So along with the big billboard changes they’re proposing, the report suggests a raft of smaller, more finicky things that they’d like to see brought into rule. If the big stuff is the architect’s blueprint of the new-build, these smaller bits and pieces might seem more like the snag list.
They want to make the square ball rule consistent across the board – as in, no distinction between balls kicked in from play or from frees. They want to expand the black card to include a player making a cynical foul without actually dragging an opponent to the ground. They want linesmen to be allowed to alert a referee to foul play while play is going on, rather than waiting for the ball to go dead as is the case currently.
Flotsam and jetsam stuff, basically. Hard to see anyone having a bone to pick with any of it.
Where it gets really interesting though is when you start drilling down into some of the proposals around dissent. It hasn’t got a lot of attention because it’s not what most people think the committee was set up to address. But when you see it laid out in black and white, what the FRC is recommending is actually pretty revolutionary.
Moving the ball 50 metres up the pitch is something that has been mooted as a possible punishment for any number of the game’s ills over the years but it has never been brought into being – or ever really come close. But if the FRC motions get through, it could bring about a complete sea-change in how players and coaches deal with referees.
If Motion 34 gets through, any dissent towards a referee by anybody on the pitch will result in the ball being brought 50 metres up the pitch. If Motion 35 gets through, only the team captain – or, a player nominated by the captain if the captain is a goalkeeper – can ask the referee why a free was given. Anyone else asks for clarification, the ball gets moved up 50 metres.
There’s more – and not just for stuff that happens on the pitch itself. If Motion 49 is passed, any manager, coach or non-playing substitute who shouts abuse at a referee/linesman/umpire will see their team punished to the tune of a 13-metre free. Or, if the kicking team prefers, a 40-metre free straight in front of the posts, which will be worth two points.
The 50-metre punishment will come in for other stuff too, mostly around the annoying carry-on after players give away frees or sideline balls. Under the new rules, if you hold on to the ball after a free is given, or if you roll the ball away, or even if you give the ball to the referee you get penalised to the tune of 50 metres. In fact, the proposal says that players who are in possession must “hand the ball to their opponents” after conceding a free, otherwise they’ll be hit with a 50-metre tax.
As we filtered out afterwards, it was notable that these were the rules that Gavin was making smalltalk about with us. He was as jazzed about them – and maybe more so – than any of the headline stuff. His rationale is simple – the GAA has talked about doing something about referee abuse forever and a day but has never achieved anything meaningful.
These changes would be meaningful. They would be lasting. In their own way, they would represent just as significant an uprooting of the culture of the game as anything else proposed.
Ambition on that scale is well worth anybody’s signature.