Mayo View: GAA opens more worldwide opportunities despite negative talk

by Caoimhín Rowland

It appears that the allure of the UEFA Champions League is waning, while the Allianz League campaign seems nothing more than a facade. Instead of focusing on sport itself, an increasing number of column inches are dedicated to discussions about fixing it.

Jim Gavin and a crack team have been deployed to save Gaelic football from wretched modernity. UEFA big wigs already look to tinker with Europe’s premier club competition.

Starting from the 2024/25 season, the Champions League will feature 36 teams instead of the current 32. Instead of group stages, there will be a 'Champions League phase' where all 36 clubs compete in a single league.

Each team will play eight matches in this phase, against eight different opponents.

They won't face the same three teams twice as they do now. So that removes those pesky final group game dead rubbers that add no interest or intrigue to viewers.

Something needed to change with the Champions League and a restructuring will at least breathe new life into an increasingly stale competition.

Whether it has been oil rich nation states buying up glory or removal of away goals siphoning off the element of surprise, it’s hard to pinpoint.

The problem with Gaelic football is more difficult to diagnose. However, for what it’s worth, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the rules of the sport, apart from the redundant offensive mark - a new rule that has brought zero benefit to the sport since its inception.

There’s a group of nostalgic dinosaurs dominating conversations about Gaelic football, however, claiming the sport was better in the 60s, 70s or 80s, when fitness levels were lower, pitches dreadful but hits were hard and kick passing prevalent.

There’s no disease within football besides the revisionists agenda.

Jarlath Burns has an unenviable task with an entrée up to his eyeballs.

What is more pressing is the creeping professionalism and rising costs of inter-county set-ups, not the rules of the game or the fact tactics and handpasses currently dominate.

Look at soccer - tactics come and tactics go. Roberto De Zerbi was heralded as the man to defeat Jurgen Klopp’s high-field pressing.

A strategy of playing the ball deep into your goalkeeper, inviting pressure and launching it deep and countering worked for last year’s Brighton team, but only until teams worked around it.

There’s a natural evolution to sport. Great minds come together to test and try new ways of playing.

That is why we love it; no game is the same or team nailed on to play as well as they did the last time out.

Pep Guardiola had to evolve from his awe-inspiring Barcelona side’s tactics to a more physical approach with Manchester City.

The personnel change from Messi and Haaland is vast but the sport and desired outcome remained the same.

But in Gaelic football, where the rules change as often as Fergal Boland kicks points over the bar, it causes headaches for supporters as much as players.

As it is now, many hardened fans question the rules or outright don’t even understand them. If you feel that statement is wrong, you have never been at a match in your life.

But while our insular Irish narrative is one of stereotypical begrudgery, football and the GAA are sports that are receiving more and more international acclaim.

Take, for example, the BBC NI coverage of our games.

I’ve long been a listener and viewer of their stellar output and their All-Ireland football final 2023 coverage has been recognised by the Royal British Academy of Television.

Millions tuned in across the world to the GAA’s premier day out in Croke Park.

DUP leader Emma Little-Pengelly showcased her skills with a hurl in a gaelscoil last week, in an earth-moving paradigm shift for Northern Irish relations.

In Normandy and Brittany in France, football is rapidly becoming one of the fastest growing games in the region. It’s a sport that for all its supposed faults requires minimal equipment and existing playing fields for soccer or rugby can be easily used.

What is more exciting, and met with scorn and guffawing ridicule by the Irish public, was news from the highly progressive World GAA, the association’s international body.

After a hugely successful 2023, they’re now hoping to have Gaelic football, hurling and camogie included as Olympic sports at a future games.

News of this emerged with the launch of a first strategic plan for the games overseas at the Canal Court hotel in Newry, where this year’s GAA annual congress was held.

The fact that Gaelic games could continue to grow and thrive beyond these islands shores is nothing new when many of the best young players have headed down under or now don jerseys in Vancouver.

I believe we will only see Gaelic games grow more, with rugby becoming more dangerous and soccer lacking the bite.

But back home, as is often the case with our diaspora, we don’t want to know about it, happier with our heads in the sand recalling the glory days of old.