Is Gaelic football in a state of evolution or stagnation?

The debate goes on. Football is in crisis they say, ultra-defensive, too much hand passing, a dearth of kicking, the art of forward play is under threat… but is it? Was there ever a golden age of football, a time that we can reference definitively and say yes, that was the lodestone of the game? Or has the game progressed and evolved over the decades, shift-shaping as the need arises, interspersed with a continuum we buy into, all depending on how old you currently are and when you saw your first ever match?

A number of things certainly have changed from the old game. Fitness levels have gone through the roof, the dismantling of the old knock-out and reduced importance of the provincial championship, far more games, along with a plethora of coaches adapting their clubs and counties to new tactics. Many suggest Donegal MK1 of McGuinness in 2011 was the point when the game crossed into a new dimension. The accepted norms and tacit understanding that both sides would go man-on-man and attack each other was dispatched into the shredder. However, if we go back, we see that the journey pre-2011 was also a home to change, not as radical but certainly changing.

Many younger readers may not realise it but until 1974 the goalkeeper didn’t kick the ball out for most teams. In 1965, my first year in St Muredach’s, Andy Boland, the college’s Sligo minor full-back, took the kick-outs. Jack Cosgrove and Enda Colleran of Galway did the honours there, not Johnny Geraghty or Gay Mitchell their keepers. Dublin’s Paddy Cullen changed that with their 1974 defeat of Galway in the All-Ireland final. Hurling kept the tradition of the goalie wearing the same jersey as the outfield players, especially in Kilkenny, until the late 1970s. So, change was slow in the game back then. But if we delve backwards, we see subtle changes, myths debunked.

Starting in the decade of the 1940s, we saw six different counties claim Sam Maguire – Kerry with three, Roscommon and Cavan two apiece, with Dublin, Cork and Meath a single each. The Antrim team of 1946 shook the then conservative format of playing by coming out of Ulster with a swift-moving game where the handpass was key. They shredded all before them until they met Kerry in that year's semi-final. Tyrone were accused by Kerry in the last few years of inventing ‘puke football’. Kerry’s treatment of Antrim in that ’46 semi-final went into history; knowing the slick passing movement of Antrim would trouble them, Kerry simply wrapped their arms around the free Antrim player thus preventing him gaining possession. Controversy raged for years over the tactic, Antrim objected to Kerry’s win, lost, and that version of the hand pass was outlawed but Kerry had already introduced their version of ‘puke ball’.

The 1950s saw seven different counties claim Sam. Kerry again led with three, Mayo two, and Cavan, Meath, Galway, Louth and Dublin with one apiece. That decade saw a more democratic sharing of the title. Three different Leinster teams and two different Connacht teams claiming big day status. In terms of style and new ideas, the format was staple diet. Kerry with their inner belief, Mayo with their swagger style football allied to a once-off generational group of greats and the other counties simply taking their day in the sun. Dublin, backboned with St Vincent’s players, were loosening the ‘culchie’ grip on all things GAA in the capital. Cavan were about to go into terminal recession and Louth had its sunny day.

The sixties saw five different counties lift the big ears. Down were the first county from the ‘Six Counties’ to lift Sam. Well coached, black shorts, red jerseys and black socks with red tops, they looked like a soccer team. Indeed, with ex-soccer players like Paddy Doherty in their midst, Down challenged the Kerry dominance. That team lifted three titles but Galway did a three-in-a-row and were unlucky not to win a four-in-a-row. Kerry, with two, and Meath and Dublin, a title apiece, completed the decade. Change was mixed, the elan and swiftness of Down was counterbalanced by the stoic and tradition of Galway. The Maroons pulled it off because they had the players. Kerry were a brooding presence at each end of decade, unsure of the Down challenge and Galway’s disdain of them.

By the seventies, a real shift in style was emerging. Four counties now shared Sam. Kerry, winners in 1970, represented the status quo. Offaly emerged to win two and Cork, with the Clifford of that era, the crop haired Jimmy Barry Murphy, picked another. But change was arriving like a tsunami.

Dublin were so far off the radar in 1974 that they were the undercard of the replayed league final between Kerry and Roscommon when taking on Wexford in the Leinster championship. I know, league intersecting with championship! By the end of that season, they were Heffo’s Army, sky blue jerseys, dark shorts and matching socks. No, not every team wore matching gear back then. Add in the Leeds United style tracksuits, a new version of the hand pass, akin to basketball, Galway looked so yesterday as the Dubs defeated them and ushered in the citizens. Soccer in the city was challenged. New heroes created, the likes of Jimmy Keaveney and Brian Mullins.

Who could stop them? Mick O’Dwyer, corner-forward on the 1970 winning Kerry team five years earlier and now Kerry manager, realised Dublin were dynamite. They had to be stopped immediately. Two players from the 1970 Kerry team survived Micko’s revolution. The Kerry team of ’75 was built on the U21 team of ’73. A new rivalry was created. Kerry shocked Dublin but a year later Heffernan refashioned his ’74 team and a brand new half-back line, towering middle and a bad ass attitude saw them keep Kerry at bay until 1978. Kerry were now the team to beat. Dublin aged and only Roscommon could give Kerry a game. Indeed, Kerry looked unbeatable as they steamrolled all opposition.

The 1980s saw five different teams win Sam Maguire – Kerry five, Meath twice, Cork, Dublin and Offaly, who did a smash and grab. Meath’s emergence in 1987 was the antithesis of the total football of Kerry. Rustic, rough and heavy-handed were the visible calling cards but buried within that team were players of culture and class, capable of converting the sweat of the team collective. They, more than any other team, showed that a good coach with hungry players could achieve the maximum. Other counties took note. Dublin would recede and it would be eleven years from 1986 before Kerry would reappear in an All-Ireland final, unbelievably winning a single Munster title in a ten-year era. Meath’s shattering that glass ceiling would bear fruit the next decade. They more than any team showed that you needn’t be from Kerry to win.

The 1990s saw Cork add to their 1989 win but if your county started with a D, now was the time to announce your arrival. Eight counties shared Sam: Down twice, Donegal, Derry and Dublin swept a D five-in-a-row. Meath came from nowhere to win the ’96 final as did Galway the ’98 final. The ’97 final resumed Kerry service. Ironically, Mayo could have choked all three in their beds had they a guy called fortune on board. Derry and Galway made warm winters for their flocks. As did Donegal. The new millennium was approaching and further change was coming.

The new millennium saw the advent of the ‘Back Door’, a second chance of survival. The 2001 winners gratefully accepted that chance. Galway blew the locks off, Kerry, who else, won the millennium-opening All-Ireland and we would be back to just four winners of Sam in that decade. Kerry topped with five, but did Tyrone win the decade with their three, grievously wounding Kerry with their in-your-face tactical method of play? Armagh took themselves into the record books with a team created from granite and raw belief. However, it was the tactical nous and couldn’t care less attitude from Tyrone that would inspire most aspiring coaches and counties.

The second decade of this millennium saw the game change the most. Tinkering with the rules, marks, defensive systems coupled with extraordinary levels of fitness would define the game. Once more we would have four winners, but this was different. Dublin, not Kerry, would set fire to the trail. Seven titles, a six-in-a-row, tore the Kerry history book to shreds and laid waste to most around them – Mayo being the only county to go head-to-head with them, exhausting themselves in the process and allowing Donegal and an average Kerry outfit the left-over morsels. Pat Gilroy ripped the arrogance and ennui from the city boys and Jim Gavin did a Pep Guardiola on them for the rest of the decade.

The decade wasn’t without controversy. Jim McGuinness certainly did it his way, displaying, indeed holding his and Donegal’s nerve with a brand of football never seen before. Had Kevin McManamon not slalomed through them in 2011 with a crucial point, who knows where football might have gone. On such runs hang history.

This decade is three seasons in. Dublin won a surreal, almost dystopian, funereal final against Mayo in the Covid December final of 2020. The ghosts of years past echoed around Croke Park that night as did the fact that the 2020 semi-finalists were replicating the same counties from a hundred years earlier. What did the ghosts of past times think of the fare on offer? Having finally unhitched the Dublin albatross in 2021, Mayo did what was expected, lost to a Tyrone team that hadn’t to display their fearsome teeth and supposed sledging. The better team simply won. Jack O’Connor came back in Kerry and added a third coming title. Dublin, supposedly left dead and buried in drizzly August 2020 by rivals Mayo, ripped out the stake from their heart and repeated the 2011 deadly dose to a shocked Jack and Kerry.

So, are we in evolution, revolution or stagnation? I will go my inner FFFG here and say a mixture of all three. Whatever you’re having yourself. The game is evolving, it has to. What was good enough in the 1960s looks tired today. That doesn’t take from that era. That era was the then peak of the game. Time sets everything. Is it a revolution? That depends on what part of the coiste you are talking about. With the Railway Cup long gone, back door in, provinces weakened, minor and U21 grade thinned away, club final moved from St Patrick’s Day, the mark, extra-time, penalties to decide, group stage championship formats, yes, the revolution is occurring – but mainly off pitch. Factor in the GPA and amalgamation of camogie and ladies football and it’s a different kettle of fish.

Stagnation? That depends. If you’re between 10 and maybe late 30s you’ll quickly adapt to the defensive modes and plays of the modern game. If you’re my age, old, you either don’t go or switch channels when you watch a Kilcoo-type outfit simply jog around the non-danger zone, passing and muscle loosening. It’s essentially a different game. Watching Glen against Naomh Conaill in this year’s Ulster club semi-final I espied a thirty-yard chest high pass caught around the lower belly and a hand raised for the mark. I switched channels to watch Leinster play Munster. And as time will go on, my generation will move on and the neo-brand of this hybrid GAA football game will no doubt become a staple.