New GAA rules make it a numbers game

The key numbers for Tipperary hurlers last Sunday were the five goals and 22 points they scored in beating Clare in Cusack Park in their Munster SHC opener.

Having lost all four games in last year’s championship, the result helped to exorcise those memories and set them off on the right track for 2023. Liam Cahill’s side are not in action this weekend, and their clash with Cork in Páirc Uí Chaoimh next Saturday week should be exciting.

Less important numbers, but fascinating in their own way, were those on the backs of the Tipp players. In February, a rule was passed at GAA Congress, whereby matchday squads had to be submitted to Croke Park by Thursday mornings, to be published on Fridays.

Limerick manager John Kiely spoke out about the new approach at the Munster championship launch, saying that it was important that management were the ones informing players whether or not they were playing.

Otherwise, there would be a risk of widespread dummy teams, he said: “Teams might be inclined to name their team according to alphabetical order and you might have a corner-back wearing number 15 and a corner-forward wearing number 4.”

Strategy

That was a strategy that Tipp decided to run with for the trip to Ennis, with attacker Jason Forde wearing 7, captain Noel McGrath 18 and midfielder Alan Tynan 26.

Only goalkeeper Barry Hogan and his deputy Rhys Shelly were exempt from the alphabetical system, wearing 1 and 16 respectively (meaning that McGrath’s brothers Brian and John were 15 and 17), though right corner-back Cathal Barrett did end up with the number 2 jersey.

It’s not the GAA’s first foray into ‘squad numbers’ – Waterford adopted such a policy during Derek McGrath’s time in charge, with Kevin Moran wearing 10 in the half-back line or midfield, Austin Gleeson wearing 6 as a centre-forward and Maurice Shanahan almost always starting despite having 21 on his back.

To Tipperary’s credit they did still tweet the starting 15 after training on Friday night, but we’ll have to wait and see if this will be their modus operandi for the rest of the championship or if it was a one-off.

Copycat

There is of course also the chance that it inspires a few copycat attempts.

Obviously, we can see the point of view of the managers who want to protect their players – as well as avoid giving away too much, too soon to the opposition – but it is still the case that the starting 15 doesn’t have to be finalised until 40 minutes before throw-in.

The most pragmatic way forward, in our eyes, is for counties to make clear that the 26-player panel chosen is just that, and there may be changes to the starting 15.

The big casualty may be the formation graphic in the match programmes, but it’s rare to see any team perfectly align with the classic 1-15 nowadays, anyway.

As a reporter, once the numbers in the programme correspond with those worn by the players, we’re fairly happy and, realistically, that’s as much as a spectator can ask for nowadays, too. Even so, some correlation with the area of the field that the player is operating would be nice from the point of view of tradition.

Each jersey has its own lineage – for instance, Dermot Kavanagh wrote a book about the men who wore the Kilkenny number 3 shirt, and any Kerry player donning the number 8 couldn’t but be inspired by Mick O’Connell, Jack O’Shea, Darragh Ó Sé and David Moran. To our mind, any move away from that would take away something special.

In modern sport, there is a lot of what we might term golden-goosery.

The Champions League in football and its rugby equivalent the Heineken Champions Cup are prime examples – they start off and prove popular, to such an extent that the organisers get the dollar signs in their eyes and expand the product, reasoning that there can’t be too much of a good thing.

The upshot is that you are left with drab, unbalanced early-season encounters and a lot of shadow-boxing until the fall guys are dispensed with and we are left with the proper box-office stuff at the later stages.

Leinster have played six matches to reach the Champions Cup semi-finals, scoring 269 points and conceding 73 – that’s an average winning margin of 32.667. We’re not going to knock Leo Cullen’s side for their relentless excellence and rejection of any complacency, but it is hard to watch games that lack any real sense of jeopardy.

That is why Saturday’s semi-final against Toulouse at Aviva Stadium has the potential to be a titanic affair. Toulouse are European rugby royalty, their five titles leaving them top of the roll of honour and the only side ahead of Leinster.

They have beaten two South African sides, the Bulls and the Sharks, to make the last four and Leinster will have to be at their best to beat them. Then, on Sunday, the holders, Ronan O’Gara’s La Rochelle, take on Exeter Chiefs.

Having lost to La Rochelle in last year’s final, Leinster would surely love a chance to put that right – provided they can get there themselves first.

Having been somewhat critical of the heavy-handedness of the Ladies’ Gaelic Football Association (LGFA) with regard to its league finals press day, it’s only fair to give credit where it’s due.

Last Saturday, approximately 900 teenage players from ten different counties converged in Abbotstown for the Gaelic4Teens Festival Day.

With a high dropout level between the ages of 13 and 17, this was designed to provide coaching in a fun way and by all accounts it was a great success.

Of course, one such initiative won’t solve all problems on its own, and it’s heartening to see that the LGFA is holding a conference, aimed at coaches, entitled ‘Engaging The Teenage Player’, on Sunday, 11 June at the Carlton Hotel in Santry.