‘We have just watched the greatest football Championship in history. Only in the GAA then could we then have a proposal for some newer rules.’
We have just watched the greatest football championship in history.
Perhaps that sounds excessive. It probably is. But after years of being told that Gaelic football was broken, that something had to be done, it is worth pausing for a moment and considering the evidence.
Everything was good about it. The famines ended. Westmeath won Leinster. Armagh won Ulster. And Mayo, eventually, completed the story by winning the All-Ireland.
There were the great narratives away from the main stage, too. Louth beat Dublin for the first time in more than 50 years and reached an All-Ireland semi-final for the first time since 1957. Cork produced their best win in more than a decade. Wicklow won the Tailteann Cup.
There were comebacks, shocks, great goals, extraordinary finishes and matches that remained alive until the final whistle.
The new structure worked and the new rules worked.
Only in the GAA then could we then have a proposal for some newer rules.
Kevin McStay, appointed by GAA president Jarlath Burns to chair the Football Expert Advisory Group , has been overseeing a series of proposed amendments which will be trialled in the Ryan Cup.
Among the most significant are a ban on fisted points unless the ball is in flight, a limit of three consecutive handpasses, a modified kick-out rule, a four-point goal and a backcourt rule preventing a team from playing the ball back across its own halfway line.
There are other proposals, too: increasing the number of substitutes from five to six, a 50-metre advancement where a mark is impeded, extending the 40-metre arc to the end-line and aligning advanced frees with the 13-metre line.
Individually, most of these ideas are perfectly reasonable. The fisted point has always felt like the football equivalent of taking the lift because you cannot be bothered with the stairs.
Handpassing can become a scourge. A four-point goal would make comebacks more plausible and leads less secure. A backcourt rule could force coaches to think differently.
There is nothing inherently foolish about any of this. And yet I find myself asking a rather awkward question.
Why?
Why are we changing a game which has just produced an extraordinary championship?
The Football Review Committee, chaired by Jim Gavin, produced a revolution. At the 2025 Special Congress, 62 motions and rule changes were passed.
Sixty-two.
That is not evolution.
That is revolution.
And we are still getting used to it.
Perhaps the most sensible thing the Expert Advisory Group could do now is recognise that there is a difference between improving a game and endlessly modifying it.
There is a point at which refinement becomes interference.
Look at the summer we have just had. Mayo against Kerry in the All-Ireland final. Down against Wicklow in the Tailteann Cup. Roscommon’s extraordinary late comeback against Galway in the Connacht final.
Dublin against Donegal. Dublin against Kerry. Dublin against Louth. Dublin against Westmeath.
Westmeath against Kildare. Westmeath against Meath. And that is before you mention Cork beating Donegal or Down beating Donegal.
It was a summer of shocks, a summer of compelling games and a summer in which teams had to adapt to the new rules and, eventually, supporters began to understand them.
So why immediately start changing them?
McStay has described the work of the Expert Advisory Group as “polishing” and “tweaking” the work of the Football Review Committee.
That is a perfectly reasonable description.
But there is another possibility.
They could decide not to polish or tweak anything.
They could decide that the best thing they can do for Gaelic football is leave it alone.
That would require more courage than it sounds.
Committees are not generally established so that their members can announce they have found nothing to do. There is a natural expectation that a committee will produce recommendations, otherwise somebody will eventually ask why the committee exists.
But sometimes doing nothing is the most consequential decision available.
The members of this group — McStay, David Coldrick, John Tobin, Conor McManus, Maurice Fitzgerald, Pat Doherty, Seamus Kenny and Johnny Bradley — are all serious football people.
They know the game. They care about it.
Which is precisely why I would trust them to say this: We have watched it. We have studied it. We have considered the evidence. And for now, we are changing nothing.
That would not be failure. It would be confidence.
Five years from now, perhaps the game will need another adjustment. Perhaps some of these proposed changes will prove essential. Perhaps handpassing will once again become a problem. Perhaps coaches will find ways around the new rules and another intervention will be necessary.
Fine.
Football evolves.
But it does not have to evolve every Tuesday because there is also a danger that constant tinkering begins to alienate the people who actually watch the game.
Supporters should not require a rulebook before they can understand what they are seeing.
The 2026 championship has provided something that Gaelic football desperately needed: evidence that the game can work.
Not theoretically.
Not in a committee report.
Not in a presentation.
In front of people.
At Croke Park and in provincial grounds across the country.
The game was alive.
The new rules survived the ultimate test.
They produced football worth watching.
So perhaps the boldest decision the Expert Advisory Group can make is not to change anything.
Leave the game alone.
Let coaches work it out.
Let players master it.
Let supporters get used to it.
And let us have the confidence to accept that, for once, the game is not broken.
Doing nothing, in this case, would actually be doing something.
It would be saying that Gaelic football has finally found a formula worth trusting.
And that might be the most important change of all.
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