No moves afoot to restrict the hand pass

FOOTBALL RULES:THE GAA aren't about to rush into tweaking the rules of football to counter the growing prevalence of hand passing. Croke Park's head of games, Pat Daly, says tactical trends within the game are fluid and tend to be judged on how sustainably successful they are for teams.

Although he wouldn’t comment in any detail specifically on Donegal, the Ulster champions’ defensive game, based on deep-lying forwards and securing possession by concentrating on hand passing as a means of moving the ball, has been the talking point of this year’s championship.

As the accompanying table shows, the county managed 243 hand passes in the controversial All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin.

“You can look at it a couple of ways. It’s either a temporary trend or it’s an increasing phenomenon. I think the consensus at the moment is that it’s a passing thing and you’re going to get these kinds of developments occasionally. It happens in other sports where you get flooding and this would be roughly comparable.

“But I think people increasingly realise there are limitations to this, even if it stabilises a team and yields some success. There are statistics that indicate the optimum ratio of hand passing to kicking is between three and four to one. If you exceed that ratio you’re into the law of diminishing returns.

“That makes sense because the more you move beyond that ration the greater the chance that a move will break down and the harder it is to make progress up the field and the more of a premium it places on physical fitness. If also creates pressures on players who have to be programmed to play this way.”

Daly is a member of the standing committee on the playing rules, established by the vote of last April’s congress as a departure from the old restriction of playing rule changes to once every five years. The committee will propose five small changes to next year’s congress.

“It’s a most welcome development and important as it gives continuity, number one, as opposed to committees coming and going. It requires continuous assessment of the games and that people involved conduct evidence-based reviews.

“This year we got for the first time comprehensive statistics, a systematic review of football games played from Rob Carroll, who supplied it to the committee. If we approach rule change on the basis of evidence-based research we’re on solid ground.”

According to Daly there are no moves afoot to restrict the hand pass as opposed to creating incentives to catch and kick the ball.

“You have different schools of thought on that. Even on the rules committee, some want restrictions on the hand pass; others want fist passes only. Others say ‘play the ball any way you choose to play it’ but reward the catcher and the kicker. That brings you into the “mark” territory but the there are people who don’t subscribe to that, even in the limited form you had in the league a couple of years ago.”

Carroll’s data on the amount of time the ball is in play (BIP) during football championship matches was released in October but it was part of a wider study of 29 televised matches last summer.

The other headline findings are in the accompanying panel.

In respect of the statistics on BIP, Carroll notes rules changes in rugby added three minutes to average playing time and in Australian rules changes raised the BIP percentage from 50 per cent to 60 per cent.

Interestingly the differentials between the match in which the ball was in play most often (Dublin-Wexford in the Leinster final at 41.55) and the lowest figure (Tyrone-Monaghan at 30.39) are significant, with the former match featuring 30 fewer fouls and 21 more shots – emphasising that frees are by far the biggest influence on cutting back playing time, as the latter match was also the one that featured most fouls.

The analysis concentrated on football but Daly says this doesn’t mean hurling is regarded as in no need of review. “Hurling is less complicated, although if you go back to the league experiments in ’09 there were issues to do with fouling in hurling – some mightn’t necessarily agree with me on that but the neck-high stuff was becoming very prevalent in the game. The type of cynical fouling isn’t as widespread because the ball moves faster and there isn’t the same opportunity to slow down frees because there isn’t the same contact at close quarters.

“There is a school of thought that some of that is creeping into hurling in that the use of the free hand is increasingly for holding purposes. Traditionally the practice was to keep your hands on the hurley whereas more recently the tendency has been to have one hand on the hurley and use the other for ulterior purposes. There is an argument this is leading to more close contact in hurling and more fouls, which are being let go by referees in the interests of maintaining continuity of play.”

BY THE NUMBERS: FOOTBALL STATISTICS 2011

HIGHEST NUMBER OF FOULS DURING SINGLE MATCH

61: Tyrone v Monaghan, Ulster quarter-final, left

47: Dublin, Kildare, Leinster semi-final

47: Kerry v Mayo, All-Ireland semi-final

47: Donegal v Tyrone, Ulster semi-final

47: Dublin v Tyrone, All-Ireland quarter-final

47: Mayo v Roscommon, Connacht final

SAMPLE: All televised SFC matches up to All-Ireland final, 2011

HIGHEST NUMBER OF HAND PASSES BY A TEAM IN A SINGLE MATCH

243: Donegal (v Dublin All-Ireland semi-final). Kicked passes: 36

194: Kerry (v Limerick, All-Ireland quarter-final, left). Kicked passes: 93

188: Kerry v (Mayo, All-Ireland semi-final). Kicked passes: 82

187: Donegal (v Kildare, All-Ireland quarter-final). Kicked passes: 52

182: Wexford (v Dublin, v Leinster final). Kicked passes: 61

179: Kerry (v Limerick, Munster quarter-final). Kicked passes 80

Lowest number: 55 – Armagh (v Derry, Ulster semi-final)

BALL IN PLAY DURING A SINGLE MATCH

Longest: 41 mins 55 sec (60%), Dublin v Wexford

Shortest: 30.39 (44%), Tyrone v Monaghan

Average: 34.39 (46%)