ALL-IRELAND winning former Meath manager Seán Boylan has warned that the skills of Gaelic football are being lost.
Boylan, who won four Sam Maguires, eight Leinster titles and three National Leagues during his 23 years in charge of the Royals, said yesterday the modern game has become clogged up with new rules, cards and an emphasis on physicality which is threatening to rob the sport of its flair.
“The fitness is enormous and there’s lots of the skill things that we’ve lost – not them all, but a lot of them,” he said.
“I think we have to try and redress that. There’s a lot of confusion with the cards – yellows, blacks and everything else. I think maybe we have too many rules, maybe we just look too much at the negatives in our game rather than the positives things we have and I think it’s time we started rewarding those positive things like the high catch.
“We’ve lost it on the emphasis that we’ve had on the physical – you don’t want to take the flair out of it. We have to salvage that again, and I think we can.”
Boylan was at Royal County Down Golf Club in Newcastle yesterday to launch the May 25 GAA Open, which will kick off The Open Fringe Festival - a week-long programme of sporting and cultural events to complement the Irish Open.
Alongside John O’Mahony he will manage the Rest of Ireland team that takes on Ulster at St Patrick’s Park. His sides from the 1980s and '90s were renowned for a hard edge that went hand-in-hand with footballing élan and Boylan is still an avid follower of the game. He was in the Parnell Park stands for last weekend’s All-Ireland U21 final between Tyrone and Tipperary and said the criticism of Red Hands’ tactics was wide of the mark.
“Were there some cynical things in it? Yes, there were,” he said.
“But let’s not overlook that there was some magnificent football in atrocious conditions. There was some marvellous football and some great scores taken and you can’t lose sight of that either. For me, a fair result would have been a draw. It wasn’t all negative and it’s very easy to hone in on one or two cynical things that happen.
“You don’t like to see some of the cynical things happening, particularly at underage level, but that's something for the powers that are controlling the game. There’s a problem with the cards because, before, when that happened the referee’s integrity would come into it – he’d know if there was intent and he could make the decision. He can’t do that today because it’s so explicit what you can and can’t do and I think it must be incredibly confusing for the referees – you’d want a computer.”
Boylan tipped Tyrone and reigning provincial champions Donegal to spearhead the Ulster challenge in this year’s All-Ireland series.
“I’d be amazed if Tyrone and Donegal don’t end up in the shake-up,” said Boylan, adding that Down could emerge as dark horses.
“Down have tremendous potential and I’d nearly discount the (Division Two) League final. It could actually make them because there’s far more football in them than they showed that day.
“It was like they were waiting for it to happen, which is so unlike Down. I know Conor Laverty and a few of the lads very well and it was disappointing. They let Roscommon dictate and that is so unlike Down. But if they get that together, God knows what they’ll do.”
