Poitín for dogs, cows and Gaelic football. The launch of Starship Gavin & the alcoholic Alsatian
en
January 28, 2025
TLDR: Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning discuss on Free State how Jim Gavin's new rules for Gaelic football will reintroduce skills that revitalize the game; they speculate about applying unconventional ideas, including input from a priest with an alcoholic dog and wonder if it is possible to restore the game after years of being coached rigidly.

In the latest episode of Free State, Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning delve into the interplay of traditional customs, current events in Gaelic football, and unforgettable anecdotes. This engaging discussion highlights how apparently disparate topics can trail into deeper insights about risk, creativity, and evolution in sports.
The Tradition of Poitín
- Poitín's Role in Livestock Recovery: Joe shares a fascinating anecdote about the community's use of poitín (a traditional Irish spirit) to revive a sick cow after calving. This tradition, while humorous, underscores the resourcefulness and ingenuity prevalent in rural life.
- Poitín has been humorously noted to help both animals and humans alike, with stories of a priest and his Alsatian dog enjoying the drink together!
Gaelic Football's New Era
The Chaos Factor in Gaelic Football: Transitioning to the world of Gaelic football, the hosts discuss Jim Gavin's strategic revisions aimed at reintroducing chaos into the game.
- Gavin suggests that the meticulous coaching has stripped the game of its excitement and unpredictability, urging a return to essential skills that originally drew fans to Gaelic football.
Cultural Challenges: Dion raises questions about whether teams can actually revert to more chaotic styles of play, especially considering the ingrained habits from previous structured strategies like the "McGinnis formula." The hosts reflect on the mental shift players will need to adapt to the new rules promoting higher tempo and risk-taking.
- The hosts debate the effectiveness and implications of the new rules introduced for the inter-provincial games, expressing skepticism about whether omnipresent managers would allow genuine creative expression to flourish.
Why the Game Needs Unpredictability
Audience Engagement: Joe notes the decline in spectator enthusiasm, citing a recent match with only 34,000 attendees compared to past matches that attracted up to 80,000 fans.
- This trend highlights the critical importance of making the game enjoyable to watch again.
The Cost of Predictability: As Gaelic football has shifted toward a more controlled style of play, both the players and audiences have lost interest. The new rules aim to promote unpredictability, a move Brolly sees as vital for revitalizing the sport.
Practical Implications of New Rules
Encouraging Creative Play: The new rule changes aim to eliminate some of the conservative strategies that dominated the game, forcing teams to play more dynamically.
- With no option to return the ball to the goalkeeper, teams will need to push forward and contest balls openly, encouraging higher stakes and thrilling gameplay.
Historic Context: The hosts reminisce about the origins of Gaelic football, noting that the game's intrinsic unpredictability was once cherished. They express hope that the newly introduced rules will facilitate this kind of lively gameplay once more.
Conclusion: Embracing the Future of Gaelic Football
As the discussion comes to a close, Joe and Dion emphasize the essential role that creativity and risk-taking play in the future of Gaelic football. The aim is to rekindle that unpredictable spirit that makes sports exciting and engaging:
- Key Takeaways:
- There may be a learning curve, but players need to adapt to riskier strategies rather than sticking to the old formulas.
- Spectators are craving an entertaining product, and Gaelic football needs to respond to that hunger for excitement.
- Changes in the rules posit an essential challenge to both players and coaches, opening the field for a revival of the sport's dynamic spirit tops off by the rich history of Irish tradition.
In conclusion, Free State brings together light-hearted anecdotes and thoughtful insights, capturing both the seriousness of Gaelic football’s evolution and its rich cultural backdrop, resonating with listeners eager to engage with Ireland's storied sporting heritage.
Was this summary helpful?
We are go for launch. Team eyes. 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8.
Welcome to Free State, everybody. Joe Brawley is back. Not even a hurricane could keep him off away from the podcast for too long. You've got your power back, Joe. You've got your
Broadband back. Got your mojo back. Yeah. Three's done everywhere here. Right now more. I know you've seen the video. It'll be 60 trees. Redwood said ours for huge fur trees. One after the other, just like a domino impact.
But it's great to see, you know, not the console, but all the locals heading out with their chainsaws and machines. Everybody's got machines here, like everybody's got machines, tractors and all sorts of machines that look the same from the front, us from the back.
and all sorts of, you know, contraptions that they can attach to the tractors. So I mean it was a brilliant community effort because really there was a lot of, a lot of wrecking around here. And then last night in Brogan's Pub in the Village, which was open then for the first time because they had their power back. It was a good credit and,
There was a fascinating discussion. These are the sorts of discussions that happened and broken all the time. So, Shaky Nelson said that the next door neighbor's dog had been knocked out and absolutely had gathered round and the dog was motionless and
didn't appear to be moving. And so they got a bottle of potching and they gave the dog a glass, they poured a glass of potching down the dog's throat. And the dog immediately sprang up. And then Pius said that they did exactly the same with the dog years and years ago at the house. And the dog lived three years after that. So you know that seed and pulp fiction.
where she has the overdose, and then he jams the big adrenaline needle into her. But then it went to look at really as fast, and then some time we should come down and do it. The only thing you'd need subtitles for some of the boys, especially, you know, so to speak very fast, I have to keep saying, boy, slow down there, you know. What was that again? But a big thing around here, genuinely, is after a cow has carved,
See, I have learned more down here than you could ever imagine. After a cow has carved, sometimes the cow struggles to get on its feet. It becomes completely exhausted, especially if it's a long labor. It struggles to get on its feet. And it can become a very serious problem. And so all the boys were saying, absolutely, matter of fact, that's why farmers would always keep a bottle or two of putching handy. You just pour the bottle of putching directly down the cow's throat
and the cow will spring up. Like, you know, some great hay jumper at the Olympics. Yeah, or do you remember that film? It doesn't go down as the cow at all. Heaven can wait with Warren Beatty. Do you remember that film when you played an American footballer? You got films? Does he get putching? Well, nobody, they thought he was dead and then he just springs out. Spoiler alert for the film made 45 years ago.
And then Paul, who was behind the bar, told us he was reminding everybody, and then everybody said, oh, that's right. They used to be an old parish priest, and he had a big Alsacean dog, and the Alsacean dog, because the priest, he was fond of a waste nifter himself.
And every time he would take a wee snifter in the house, you'd give the dog a wee snifter, and Paul says the dog would commend on his father, and he would pour a pint for the priest and a half one, and he would pour a pint and a half one for the dog. And the illustration would drink, he says, if there was any delay, the illustration would be whimpering.
Like seriously, he says, we tried him one night. He says, we thought I'd give him it paints, right? It paints. And the only, the only side effect was that, that, that on his way home, he went for a kebab.
But it has been, it's been pretty, it's pretty crazy that a lot of people would have power and what's been going on in the West really. It's, it's, it's very, it's, it's not a good one about departure. You know, I thought that was absolutely fascinating. And then I thought, you know, we'll let there's a one off, but in fact, this is, this is a known way of dealing with
Um, and we, apparently it just runs through the code according according according to Patrick Brogan, it just runs through the code. Right. Cause I said, like, you know, the way the cows, five stomachs and all that. Like, I mean, you think that the cow would be very good at coping with alcohol because
You know, it's eating grass. And grass was very acidic, and all of the sort of properties of grass and stuff of it. And he was saying, yes, but he says it actually runs through it. He said, like, you pour the, the, the, the perching in one end. And as he put it, it comes out nearly immediately at the other end. Right. I mean, I said, I said, what would you not put a bottle under it and collected again?
Not down. No. No. Well, let me try and use this. Let me link this now. When the cow gives birth, it may be necessary to put some putching down his throat to re-energize the cow. No, it's only if a cow stand up. I'm making a link here because I'm moving on to stop bringing you back to details. Sorry.
When Gaelic football gave birth to its new rules, so far no putching has been needed to revitalize the entity that gave birth to the new rules. This isn't working.
You said, Joe, you told me on Saturday night to turn on the open mail. I used to think Pat's plans and now these were bad, but yours are the worst ever. Turn on TV. Turn on TV. Turn on TV car. You told me on Saturday night. Watch the new rules. So I did that. I turned it on and I sat there looking at the screen for a long time and I was looking at a gun. This looks a lot like the old Gaelic football. Nothing's happening.
There's nothing going on at all. The play is very static. It's just going round and round and round. And it took me some time to realize that actually the picture had froze them. That T.G. Carr, power had gone. They had no, they were another casualty of the storm and for lots of people,
There was just no picture from the double Mayo game, so I was not getting a snapshot of the new dynamic Gaelic football. I was just watching a power cut, essentially. That happened a lot of people. Just before they throw in.
in the Galway Armam, which was on RTI, got a WhatsApp and it said, it said, I'm just reading from it here, the rocket is fueled and the final countdown to a new dawn has begun. And I know what you're thinking. I was getting a WhatsApp from Elon Musk. Yeah, of course you are, or as Donald Trump calls him Eli. But it was from Tim Gavin, who of course is the author of the Football Rules Review Report. And
And it was such a huge anticipation around this. Everybody was talking about this, because obviously the inter-provincials, which were really run off as a
You know, as a spectacle, just to break the ice towards the new rules. But all the teams, the teams were playing exactly as if the old rules still applied. You know, pay them, pile them back and they're blank at the fence. Solo, solo, hampas, hampas, hampas. So everybody was watching this one.
you would have been underwhelmed to what's the first part of Armagh. Don't forget that those two were
two of the most expert exponents now took them a long time to get there, but they became expert exponents of the Jim McGinnis formula, you know, so that it was virtually impossible to score against. I mean, it's no coincidence that those two reached dollar and final last year, you know, any year when the dubs were underwhelming, the dubs have done their best over the years to try and rise above it. But ultimately, the laws of physics went out on whenever you're playing, you know,
that very, very highly rehearsed way. It's going to be horrible to watch, as we saw, for example, in the junior final played under the old rules on Saturday. But it's undeniably effective. And as Jim Gavin said,
Last week in the BBC, he said, look, the problem is that the game had been captured, had been taken hostage, essentially, by managers and coaches. Entertainment was gone, chaos was out the window, everything was controlled, and there was no unpredictability. And you see, like, for me, the biggest indictment, as you think back to sort of, you know, throne plan Dublin under lights and crow park on a Saturday night, you know,
during those sort of great years for Gaelic football and 80,000 people there. Home Dublin games on a Saturday evening, huge crowds, 60, 70, 80,000 people. And to see Dublin and Mayo on Saturday evening,
34,000, I think, was there. And the place looked empty and felt empty. And sooner or later, I think the financial side of it was extremely important for the GA penny was dropping, the people are watching, we're sitting more than not cool.
The changes are definitely going to help. There's no doubt about that. Are they? Yeah, definitely. Like, if you... I wrote on Sunday on my calling, watching the go where I'm arguing was like waking up from a bad dream. And you know that one of the most depressing sites in the world sport, the laborious slow movement of the ball out of the defence,
Using the keeper as the extra man to play donkey with the opposing team pushing up, you know, and you know the forwards might make a Superficial effort at a tackle but then there's no point because they were able to just pass the ball back to the goalkeeper No, and then knock the ball over your head back over your head back and that's completely disappeared. Yeah, you know
I mean, I don't know if you noticed, but no short kickouts at all. I mean, almost every kickout was long, and that means contested. Every one of the kickouts was contested. I mean, in one stage in the second half, goal, we won five long-arm kickouts in a row.
So chaos, you know, one of the things that we lost after when we go to see us. We lost after chaos. Well, don't we? No, we do. We do. And we lost after as local chemists here, the overtired chemist, Brendan Glendon, who was from off, they used to say, when he tried to get me to watch Gaelic football, he said, there's great bejesus in it. You know, and you want that bejesus. Yeah. And where did the bejesus go?
Exactly. You know, it was all very sterile. It was all very formulaic. And, you know, you could see the massive impact of not being able to give the ball back to the keeper, the massive impact of the new kick-out rule. And the problem isn't the new rules. Right. The problem is cultural.
Well, you've got a whole generation of footballers who don't know anything else except that highly programmed training regime, highly programmed game regime.
And that, let's call it the McGinnis formula, you know, which spread like a mix of mitosis whenever he came up with it, because people said, Jesus Christ, this guy can win an all-out and from a start and start, from a team of no-hoppers. He was like one of those Hollywood movies where Morgan Freeman, you know, has fired down to some lowly, some lowly non-league basketball team and within a year they're the NBA champions, you know.
So Jimmy, Jimmy wins the All Ireland in 2012 and everyone, fuck me, we can do that too. We can do that. We can learn that. And of course, you know, it is meant that that blanket defensive game has become embedded in the psyche of a tired generation of football. It's like a lot of young players play, isn't it?
You don't know anything else except the blanket defense. You know, individual, individual skill is not that important. You know, there's no man marking, for example, so you have a whole generation of young footballers now who do not know how to man mark. They do not know how to actually defend. You know, I remember, like Kier McKeever was always assigned to Peter Calvin, one of the greatest footballers that has ever played the game. Kind of two-footed, tough.
really tough, electric, tremendous appreciation of space, and yet every single trick, it's just a nightmare to mark. And yet, Peter Kahneman said, look, my misfortune was to be born at the best at the same time as Karen McKimmer. Probably the greatest man marker that's ever played to you. And a few had said, nowadays, over the last number of years, if a dangerous forward
had was it was in on his man one on one. His man would be shouting at the sideline. Where's the sweeper? Where's the cover? Quickly get the cover in the manager. We said, where the hell is the sweeper? So you have a whole generation of players. You don't know how to man more. But it's not. You have a whole generation of fours like me, whenever I was playing.
I knew the second, the second of the fender had the ball. I was going, I was going. And I mean, you had to be there to defend. Why weren't you there? You knew the ball was coming, why weren't you there? Under the McGinnis formula, it's completely pointless, a forward to make a run for a ball out of the defense. It's never coming. So what happened was, if I was going forward, I'd go and stand on the sideline on the 21 in my prescribed position.
keeping the width. I would wait till the ball was laboriously brought up. It would be hand passed down to me. I would hand pass it back. I would try to cut inside.
maybe just to create space for someone else, then I'd cut back out, I'd get the ball back, I'd pass it back to the man I'd saved me. And the laborious process would start all over again. So, Joe, can you actually? The players are starting to wake up to a new game. Yeah, you see, the thing is, I wonder about this, because like this sort of pre-lapsarian garden of Eden, where you think everything was pre-lapsarian.
It's one for I knew you'd pick up on that. Croll up shutters. A friend of mine invented a double airbag system for the fixed problem of the Croll up shutters in the carving car. Really, we're back to the cows. We're back to the putching in the cows. We should maybe look in into doing it between the sheet nuts.
And the putching for the cows is probably a spin-off. That's... My man was a genius. That's so weird. He also did the complex crosswords for the time, three years. Really? And wrote a famous book on crosswords, on those sort of complex crosswords called Tart with no hair as a ride.
Oh, really? Well, what was the answer to that one? I'm not going to tell you that. OK. And tart was tart with no hair is a ride. You see, I was looking back here, Michael Cusack in 1885. I mean, you'd probably call Michael Cusack a Wespress because he played cricket and he liked cricket. But we'll pass and move on from that. But he said when they were when they were codifying the rules of Gaelic football, he said it was not to be passed or carried in any way. The ball and maybe caught caught.
There must be kicked or put on the ground at once, and they also be hit with a hand. The passing and carrying is entirely foreign, having been imported from rugby. And did Gaelic football for a long time, it was played with this sense, almost like that kind of philosophy ingrained.
the hands, you're only kind of borrowing the use of your own hands to catch a ball and then kick it away again and just move it like that. But once coaches realized that there was a risk-free way of advancing, it's going to be very hard, even the bits I watched last over the weekend, that sense of
Like that sense of still being able to retain possession and getting football's problem for me is it still has this thing where it is very hard to transfer the ball from one team to the other if one team doesn't give up possession because holding onto the ball is easy. I think that the problem at the moment is this is cultural, right?
You know, don't forget these teams have only had about a month's trail and neither of the teams. In any of the games over the game, we're able to take advantage of the excitement this new game has to offer. Because they're so programmed to be risk-free and risk-averse. Down, for example, against risk-com, and they got walloped by trying to play
the old-style game. Just saying, OK, we'll leave three less defenders in the blanket. But what we will have at the same time, three less.
three less attackers able to come into the blanket. So that's how we're going to play. Eventually they sat there and eventually they just got picked off. They tried to go forward as a group and come back as a group. Exactly the same thing happened during against Turon. Turon was a contest between two Turon managers.
But setting out a side, our manager who managed the unbelievable feat of turning Kerry into a blanket defense of Clinton. How do you tell him? How dare you play on a blanket defense? We had, as a good parliament from OMA said, demonstrably the better players.
But we were continuing to play as if the old drills still applied and Turon just picked us off. Bit by bit over the game, they played, they kicked the ball more, they played more in accordance with this new game, albeit that they're still a long way off. But the players, the essential problem is this.
that the players are so unused to playing football, that they need to be deep, deep programmed. But why would they do it if they don't have to do it? Well, they aren't going to have to do it. Because, I mean, go away and don't go. Go away on our mouths are a very good example.
of the transition and the slow transition that there's going to be. Because there are two managers here in McGaney, who's been with ARMA for 10 years, and finally got it right last year. Porik Joyce will go in. Neither of them are original thinkers. All they've done. Their successful game plans will be based on copying other... Most people in any sphere aren't original thinkers, or more on original thinkers. My point is this.
The penny is going to drop sooner or later that this is really a return to the old game. That's really what it is. So that you look up when you're coming out of your defence now because you can't give it back to the keeper. You don't want to move it forward laboriously because you want to take advantage of the fact.
you know, that you've now got space to play into, which you didn't have before, right? So that means you need to play with half forwards, you know. And your first option should be, as it used to be, accurate, sort of 35, 40-meter kick to that area. I mean, there's common data beautifully on three or four occasions yesterday. Their goal, one of their goals at this court, lovely, sort of 45-meter kick pass out of the defense, and then an immediate finish for the goal.
I like to look across common, would you? I was looking at them. Well, they kick the ball a bit more. But let's look at the Armagorwe. The first half was very hesitant. And the players are playing as if the old road is still applied. They stick on a pig. But yet, every kick out was a battle. The players were starting to use the solo and goal. So when you get fouled, you don't have to wait. I'll take a free. You can fold again to solo and go.
Yeah. You can either top it yourself and keep going, which nobody's really taking advantage of yet. Or if you're in the ground, you can throw it up to a team yet who could automatically top it and go. You can throw it. You're going to swing it.
Oh, if you've got 50 yards, 50 meters? No, no, no, no. Say I'm fouled and I'm in the ground, and the ref's given the free. He's blue. I can immediately throw it up to team here to take the free. Right. As long as he does it immediately, he can tilt up and go. So I'm absolutely in chaos for defenses. The problem is, like if down are a classic example, they refuse to kick the ball. They're all programmed at solo hump pass solo hump pass solo hump pass.
And the penny is starting to drop. It's going to start to drop soon that that is no longer going to have to work. That's no longer going to work. You're going to kick the ball.
The amazing thing for me, the most pleasing thing for me, and I see me all Paul, Carol Kean, and there I see news, noticed this as well, he was at the Mona and Calvin game. You know, coaches were given out afterwards, but it was all very messy and chaotic, you know, blah, blah, blah, you see, because they like everything to be pristine. Order, yeah, the PEP card, the other approach. That sort of thing. But, Carol's making... Well, we are Jurgen Klopp's.
Kara was making the point that he never, it's been years since he heard a crowd so engaged in the game. Right. You know, the ball kicked out, broken down, fighting for the ball. You know, and he actually showed a sequence on his Twitter of the game, which was a complete mess of balls. They're all fighting for it. It's broken away. The crowd are going away. The Jesus breaking ice is all over the place. This is all over the place. It's broken. It's like drinking. It's like cows drinking pots. They were on their feet. They were moving.
I mean there was men from, there were grown men from Mona and Moon, which will ask, that's not unusual. Growing men from Mona and Moon. Pretty much cows drinking, poaching, competition would fire people off. But that's been a very rare sound. And exactly the same thing started to happen during the second half of our man going. Road was roaring every ball.
The ball was being moved quickly. Both teams were struggling to set up the blanket defense. And as teams become more confident with this new way, it will be impossible to zoneally defend. See, because you can't delay any more cynical, cynical violence not going to work. You know, because of the 50 meter, the ball being moved forward 50 meters. And a classic illustration of it for me was with the McGinnis formula, the bass players often didn't win. Okay.
I mean, like, that Donnie Gold team that Jim had, that they won the all-around was with the brand new game. You know, they were coming up against some, like they came up against a truly brilliant carry team, brilliant, brilliant individuals who were mystified, who were just lost. Yeah.
They did exactly the same with the 2014 Dublin team. They absolutely cut them to pieces. With rehearsal of their system, because the dubs were saying, right, we're just going to go out and play our game the way we always have. We're going to go out and play man to man. And so as the game between going in our mouth opened up, our mass shortcomings were really exposed as individuals. You could see.
These boys are struggling, you know, because they do not have the skill levels that you would associate with the game say 15 years ago. Right.
I'm excited about the new rules. The only thing that I wouldn't have allowed was the keeper to come forward. I would ban the past to the keeper altogether. Right. Because there are two issues with that. What they did ban the past to the keepers. No, except in the opposition half. Right. But the point is this, that you can hold possession back and forth in the opposition half because you haven't got an extra amount. Right.
Once he gets over that, once he, no, you can be taken to risk. Do what I do. Don't, for example, get turned over. Do you know what I would do? Go on. Do you know what I would do? I would send another man into the opposition half. So you've got four against three in the half. You go even lighter in the half defending.
get them panicking thinking, if we lose the ball, there's loads of people up there. And then, you know, so you actually, then you're pushing people back. You're making people think, it's like when you're defending a corner in football, if you leave people on the halfway line.
They can't bring everyone forward for the corner. So it's a, it's a question of finding it. Well, that, that, that, that, that might be a refinement, but I mean, it seems to me, this isn't a rule. This is, this is, this is, I mean, it seems to me that what a lot of these managers are going to find when I spoke to somebody very closely on my camp, when the new rules came in, and he said to me, look, our initial view is that very little is going to change, right?
After yesterday, after the match against Galway, where they were well-upped, I appreciate their all Ireland champions and all of that. But I think things are going to have to change. You know, you watch Derry, for example. Derry, it's not going to be feasible. Derry thought, Patti Talley thought, look, we can more or less play the same game. We won't, you know, make that many changes. Now you've got these eight players in the sort of middle third, exhausting themselves, running up and down and running up and down. Very little kicking of the ball.
And the problem is that it's impossible to impose order on chaos. These rules are designed to introduce some chaos, some much needed chaos, excitement and contest. And it's very difficult to impose order on that. I mean, I think also probably psychologically, you know, for our ma, you know,
who have a tradition of very robust aggression on the field and of a war-like approach to the game, having to hand the ball respectfully back to an opponent.
would be enough to cause across from Glenland, for example, a nervous breakdown. How do you decide, never before seen in the Gaelic bitches of Ireland handing the ball to the people? Well, you say that. You say that. But I was looking back and over the format, the original rules of Gaelic football. And I found in a book called The Little Book of Gaelic Football, that Mara Staben, one of the initial rules of Gaelic football included,
At the start, players shall stand in two ranks opposite each other until the ball is thrown up, each man holding the hand of one of the other side. That was so that they would be the right distance apart.
Well, it was bringing it because they were also trying to create a sense of Gaelic football being something sporting and pure compared to the violence and the poverty of rugby and football and soccer. Well, I mean, it didn't last.
No, but the original Gaelic football was really just the honour of the parish and wigs on the green. The idea of wigs in the green was, you know, you're three or wigs in the green and you're fissified with the men of the other parish. And Gaelic football and all its madness in the early stages was just a manifestation of that. I mean, the scores were so low, for example, but of course it was hugely popular.
Well, I mean, Joey'd only Jerry's father. And there was a famous referee in the old days, and Jerry always tells the story about his father. And those days the referee that you're talking about, he had to throw the ball in backwards over his head, lest he be accused of partiality. Yeah. You see, so he had to stand facing away from on the two, all the outfield players in each team would line up in the middle. And he would then throw the ball backwards over his head into the air.
And Johnny was, Johnny was refereeing them. And those days, the only qualification for F was that you had a whistle in the ball and you were prepared to take your life. As the journalist, P.D. Meagan, the famous G.A. journalist put it, in experience, in the conduct of organized games led to many disputes.
And it was a very gentle way of putting it. But then maybe Joey was asked to referee our bow and murtown, which was a notorious fixture between the two neighbors and his throne. And he came home very late in the evening, and Jerry says, Jesus, that, Janet Jerry tells us, Jesus, that he will worry what took you so long. He says, some he says, through the ball and a quarter past three.
on a turn, he says, to see the ball trickling over the sideline. And the two teams gone out, he says, he says, by the time I left at 10 past four, they were still gone out on the next field. So they fought their way off the pitch that was marked out until the next field. And
See, that sort of, I mean, obviously none of that would be acceptable or no one at all. All acceptable. The skill levels are way up, but... Because we even as we embrace chaos, we keep keeping it in one field, one field at a time. Yeah, but the thing about the new rules is that there are great skills in killing food, kicking the ball long.
Take on the bottle piece, you know, catching a ball over your head. But yeah, this is my problem. This is what I'm saying. Let me finish. Let me finish moving the ball quickly. I mean, let me finish for it. Moving the ball quickly, creating goals, breaking at speed, you know, and all of that, all of that is now on the table.
The big problem is all these couches who were going around, right? It was a one game plan fits all. You know, you start with your sweepers and your blanket defense. And the boys all then are in their comfort zone. It's what I call pointing and shouting football. So defenders, all they did was point shuffle left shuffle right point shot is there. I come up on the outside of here, right? It was like going to a Tourette's Convention.
Often, often not a club league game and even at county games. Genuinely, the only sound would be the sound of the players shouting at each other, organizing themselves into their blanket defensive formation. And then coming forward very slowly and getting into that, getting into their formations ready to try and break the blanket defense. So for example,
after Dublin dashed themselves on the Donegal Rocks in 2014, the famous infant, Jim Gavin, having sized everything up meticulously as he does, brought in the famous Irish basketball coach Mark Ingle.
because Jim's reckoning was okay, a basketball court's 30 meters by 15 meters. And if in that very, very confined space, a 15 meter by 15 meter square, when you're attacking, you can score five men against five.
Well, and surely in a pit that's 150 meters by 90 meters, we can get a lot of assistance from a basketball coach as to how to break open these heavily packed defenses. An angle taught them to cut and to screen and how to work off the ball and work in threes and triangles and circles and looping around and all of that.
and Dublin changed from a really exciting dynamic team, you know, who were just like, I mean, were Gallipers and great footballers. They changed from that into a highly formulaic team, because they had no choice. And, you know, people then were saying, I should have done as born as everybody else.
Because he had no choice. And in the same way, I'm looking forward now. I mean, the irony of irony is imagine having destroyed the old game of Gaelic football and triumphed with the McGinnis formula. Imagine if Jimmy McGinnis know. With the new rules,
Having been responsible for everything that is inflicted on the people of Ireland over the last decade went on to win in all Ireland and did it with a sense of adventure and stale and panache, which I think is a real possibility.
Do you think, ultimately, because it does come down to that key question, because once you have coaches involved and once you have people, it's the same in soccer when you watch the Manchester City playing Arsenal or something today. And it's all positional discipline. And it's everything is just, you know, you hold your positions. And football still has that sense of, you know, you can win the ball back off the opposition easier than you can in Gaelic football. And so there is that sense of jeopardy that
isn't there, if a Gaelic football team decides to hold on to the ball, there has to be that sense of taking a risk to just think about it. It's worth it. You do say risk embracing the chaos is worth it.
Well, you see, you're going to be forced to take risks. You know, like, Darrie went out and tried to play a risk-free football, and they got walloped by Jerome. You're going to be forced to take risks, right? So what I mean by that is this. When a corner back gets the ball now, right? And everybody's pushed up, right? There's no heavy incentive for the team.
who have been attacking, but now don't have the ball to push up and press and try to win a turnover high up in the pitch and then go for goal. Because they can no longer employ the extra man, they can no longer give the ball back to the keeper and start that abysmal sort of merry-go-round of passing over his head, passing over his head left, right, and here we go again. So, once teams start to press properly and start really working that, as we used to do in the old days,
The second effect, the defender better get the hell out of there as quickly as possible. You've got to get out of there. The other thing is, I thought the down were a great example of it against Raskomin. Because down were trying to employ a zonal blanket defense, they were getting completely lost because with 11 players, and with having to keep three up at all times, the transfer to the defense
The downboys were trying to get into the zone of defensive positions. In Roscommon, we're just cutting them to pieces. I like the Roscommon, I said it before. You've got to mark your man. You've got to mark your man. So once the penny starts to drop in that, I mean, the classic, the long kick cuts now. So you could in the old days, let's say you're playing against the dubs, right? Or you're playing against Donnie Hall? Or Jerome's now Morgan?
Once they were ahead with 10 minutes to go, you were screwed. They were going to kick short, rehearsed kickouts. They're going to hold possession. They're going to get back to the goalkeeper. They're going to hold possession and whole possession and whole possession. They're going to file you in your heart. They're going to cynically prevent you taking a quick free. You know, no.
Now with 10 minutes to go and you're two points up or three points up, you've got to set the ball down and kick it long. Now you can try at your peril to kick short kickouts, but it's not really going to be feasible because the shortest kickout that a keeper can kick now is 23 meters, right? And it's much easier to defend that work confined area because you've got to kick it out beyond the 40 meter arc.
Whereas players had to cover the whole pitch, you know, and you could do a short kick, that's all. I mean, you think about that in a big championship match now, you know, 10 minutes to go. There's only a couple of points in it. Nobody's saying, oh, Jesus Christ, how are we going to get the ball back?
Why are we going to get the ball back? And you don't do that to press inside of a team trying to press up. The defensive team just gives it back to the keeper. He gives it back. They start all over again. And you eventually just retreat into your blanket defense and hope, hope, you know, that something's going to give. And I thought, I thought that, I mean, I, I, I texted Tim after the game. And I said, successful launch, Starship Gavin is in the air.
And he just sent his thumbs up today. He sent his arms. He sent a yawning emoji, another text from Joe Bradley.
Galway Bay FM, I mean, everybody was watching this game beforehand. It was just a pity that it started with Galway on our map because the Dublin Mail game was highly entertaining. There were all sorts of thrills and spills and the result was unpredictable in the sense that you knew Dublin were going to win. You just didn't know how they were going to clear. Oh, I got to apologize to the people of mail. But according to Galway Bay FM, even Donald Trump was watching the Galway on our game from the White House, the debut of the New Roads.
Really? We're hearing he has the burgers, the cola, the chicken wings ordered and the lights are dimmed in the Oval Office. I don't believe that. Although he still is a resident of a still of, as of today, not given as a pendulum, I'm in euros. So we look forward to that.
Well, he didn't, but, you know, close, you know, Donald Trump are me giving their opinions. I'm not sure who is that, that's familiar with the workings of gay, they've fullscreened. Oh, sure, hold on a second. Hold on a second.
You're given your opinion on the new rules, and your television was frozen. Your television screen was frozen. How many times have I told you what? I've been listening to anything I've said. You are a full spiffer. You're just nodding along with me. You're watching soccer.
I've told you I have fancy Ross common. That's a generality. That's like, you know, I mean, that's a Trumpism. You were watching soccer. There was soccer on Sunday. I tell the truth, look at me. Look at me, tell the truth.
You were watching bloody soccer if you were I like soccer Sunday was very It was on it was on I don't know who knows what challenge I did actually feel I have read for the question
I saw the goalkeeper. I saw that. What color? What colors were the teams?
Ross Common were yellow and blue. This is like, you know... Was there anything distinctive about the jerseys that were wearing themselves? They liked the old parma jerseys, the old Italian parma jerseys. They were, you know, they were a nice stripe on them, I thought. So I watched that game. The keeper, who's a dad they were playing, and my grandmother was from dad shows.
When you're right, you're right, when you're right, accidentally straight away from fucking, you know, doki, doki, young man, plan, fucking, I don't know, somebody in the cricket. Well, the Kula playing chess and their celebrations, you know, that was the, you know, I'd say I did enjoy that. You did enjoy that. It was the, it was the Kula manager and one of the players playing chess as the rest of the boys were
Singing, we are the champions, my friend. They probably wouldn't sing that and kill it. It'd be a bit lowbrow. Probably listening to Mozart. I like yourself. With a menu or maybe dead. Like all this, this is all the other people. You'll start wafting through the changing room before the gladiates. Oh yeah, you hate all that stuff. Yeah, you read it in your suit. I will accept I have a very sophisticated palette for the world.
But that wasn't, you know, I mean, I wouldn't want the band to just, um, uh, dezerberflit to the didn't give a change in it. It was before it sounded much. Well, that's fine. But you know, you can, you sometimes we can have a change in for the man in the white coats. They will. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, as I said, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to do a anger there, just don't give a what's up. Like we seem to have reached an easy piece, but there is more to life than what, than, uh, more to Ireland than this.
You remind me, given your opinion on the new rules, it reminds me of a great story, one time Pat's plan, and we're doing the Sunday game, you see, and down we're playing Antrim in the first round of the time, and Pat said, well, Lisa, I'll eat my hearties as of down, don't win this one, you see?
And we had all the newspapers, you know, they used to, whenever, I would say, they used to have all the Sunday papers there, you know, in the studio before, and you'd be sitting for a good way, you know, because you'd get makeup on and all of that. Anyway, I just happened to pick up what you would never done, Pat's Sunday World column. The headline in the back of it was, Antrim to down down. Spelan protects major shock and ulceries, he said, well,
Fuddly enough putt. The putt, I would say, I can't see, don't be beaten. I says, well, Fuddly enough putt.
You must have very pure communications. We are ghostwriter. Of course, we went bright red and I showed the paper up to the television. You couldn't see him. You couldn't see him. Well, I'll be giving insights throughout the season. Let me know if any of you can say whatever you like and nobody really cares.
I mean, there's what we need to get back to. Those electrifying days when the whole country was glued to the Great Carry teams, the Red Drone teams, obviously the Great Dairy team of the 90s, the Great Galway teams of Joyce and Michael Donner and all that. You know, the idea of sport being... Well, we'll see if anyone picks up from my little tax courts, please. A glorious... A glorious... A glorious are of freedom.
You know, and of course, not just that, not just that are freedom and excitement and unpredictability, but the way it was then when it was the whole topic of conversation and the run up to games, these vast collisions and the excitement. I mean, I will never forget Garth Brooks manager.
coming to the Alderland football final last year as a guest of Peter Aiken, Riel Skomit. And he was there, savoring the whole day. And I met him after the game again, because I'd met them before for a paint, and I met them after the game.
And he said to me, oh, I mean, a wonderful occasion. It was just a pity about the game. Yeah. And that's what the Gavin formula is designed to change. To get us back to crowds on their feet, roaring with great excitement. You know, win or lose, win or lose, coming home, drained and exhilarated and looking forward to the next game and wanting to get out onto the pitch and practice your skills, you know.
Well, as Kevin Keegan used to say when he was manager of the Newcastle team, and he only really thrilling Newcastle team of the 1990s that blew the Premier League, he used to just say, expect anything. And that's what you want. The equal brother. We'll talk to you on Thursday.
Was this transcript helpful?
Recent Episodes
The Decline of the Loyal Family. How Ulster Protestants were sold out by their leaders. With Unionist historian Aaron Edwards.

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning
CS Lewis wrote that there would be no better to place to live than Northern Ireland ‘if only I could deport the Ulstermen’. On Free State today Joe and Dion talk to the world-renowned historian Aaron Edwards about the predicament of unionism today. Is unionism a philosophy or an anxiety? Do unionist politicians have a strategy or are they trapped by parochialism? Edwards talks about his own upbringing on the hardline loyalist Rathcoole Estate in Belfast and why every victory gets turned to defeat.Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning is a Gold Hat Production in association with SwanMcG.For more on Free State: https://freestatepodcast.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
February 04, 2025
Joseph O’Connor: Free State Special

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning
Author Joseph O'Connor discusses challenges of Nazi resistance, female torment, and Kerryman Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty in his book The Ghosts of Rome. A podcast on Free State Special.
February 01, 2025
Is there a world after Gaza?

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning
Free State discusses the lack of world leaders' condemnation over Donald Trump's statement about Gaza, analyzing its implications and comparing it to President Higgins' speech at the Holocaust Memorial Day, alongside Pankaj Mishra's new book The World After Gaza.
January 30, 2025
Storm Eowyn and the silencing of Joe Brolly

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning
Storm Eowyn causes nationwide power and internet outage in Ireland; podcast Free State reviews episode three, interviewing Charles Anyaegbunam about his privileged life in Nigeria and his son Rejjie Snow.
January 25, 2025

Ask this episodeAI Anything

Hi! You're chatting with Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning AI.
I can answer your questions from this episode and play episode clips relevant to your question.
You can ask a direct question or get started with below questions -
What was the main topic of the podcast episode?
Summarise the key points discussed in the episode?
Were there any notable quotes or insights from the speakers?
Which popular books were mentioned in this episode?
Were there any points particularly controversial or thought-provoking discussed in the episode?
Were any current events or trending topics addressed in the episode?
Sign In to save message history