It was with some excitement that I looked
forward to this year’s International Rules test between the AFL’s finest and
the Emerald Isle’s top Gaelic footballers, held at the iconic Croke Park. With
2015 being an annus horribilis for
the indigenous code, both on the field (73 stoppages per match) and off it
(Goodesgate, Essendongate, Phil Walsh’s murder), perhaps the hybrid game could
light the way to a better brand of football.
International Rules is much maligned by AFL
fans: the Irish are seen as lacking in physicality and athleticism compared to
our players, and the contest is viewed as a junket. But the hybrid code
actually retains many features of pre-Demetriou Australian rules. There are few
ball-ups, no rolling mauls, limited interchange, and teams are forced to kick
to contests due to the ban on chains of six or more handballs. While it is
admittedly a less physical game, it is more physical than Gaelic football and
it favours the small forward over the clearance specialist midfielder.
The result is a code which moves at the
steady, constant tempo of a soccer match and which features the round-ball
skills of the world game, in addition to the physicality and aeriality of
Australian rules. In other words, it combines some of the best features of this
blog’s two favourite sports! No wonder I’m so excited about it.
Although Australia were the first to score,
courtesy of a Robbie Gray over within the first minute, the match was less than
four minutes old when a goal-mouth scramble caused by the first of many
goalkeeping errors from Dustin Fletcher led to Aidan O’Shea goaling. The sides
traded overs in a solid display of accurate kicking until the score reached
21-12 in Ireland’s favour; the only behind of the first quarter came in the
final minute of the term, when Irish goalkeeper Niall Morgan deflected Jarryd
Roughead’s shot through for a behind.
At the start of the second quarter, an over
and a behind for the visitors, clad in navy blue shirts with yellow trims and a
yellow Southern Cross, brought the score to 21-17. But it wasn’t long before
O’Shea bagged his second goal of the match, Ireland getting a second bite of
the cherry after Fletcher saved Bernard Brogan’s initial shot.
More skilful ball movement by the Irish,
sporting lightly hooped shirts in two shades of green and embellished with
white and yellow trims, took the score to 34-22 by the twelfth minute of the
quarter thanks to two Brogan overs. It was then that Australian captain Luke
Hodge brought back memories of his Round 21 bump which put Chad Wingard’s head
between himself and a behind post, when he bundled Donegal man Patrick
McBrearty into the goalpost after yet another Fletcher mistake. Conor McManus
made no mistake from the spot, and the men in green led by eighteen points
having scored three goals.
Ireland led 43-23 at the main break:
Australia’s shining lights were Sam Mitchell in the midfield and their fleet of
small forwards led by Eddie Betts, who menaced the Irish defence with their
ground-ball skills. Statistically, however, the two teams were evenly matched,
with similar numbers of marks and tackles and roughly even time in possession,
though the tactical contrast between them could be seen in the handballs: just
before half-time, Australia hit the century mark while Ireland, where purists
have complained of late of the increasing handball-to-kick ratio in Gaelic
football, had executed only thirty-eight.
Australia began the third quarter well with
Leigh Montagna and David Mundy kicking overs early on. The match never lost its
free-flowing tempo, and when Nick Riewoldt was tackled inside the penalty area
in the fourth minute of the second half, we had played forty minutes of
football (!) and had just witnessed the first stoppage.
Two further Irish overs blew the score out
to 50-29, but one over from Luke Breust, two from Riewoldt, and Fletcher’s
decision to come out of his box and act as a ‘sweeper-keeper’ got los australianos back into the contest.
The hosts led 50-39 at the final change, but the ascendancy was with the
Aussies, whose superior fitness often proves the difference late in these
matches.
A fierce opening to the fourth quarter saw
neither side score for nearly six minutes as both relentlessly attacked and
counter-attacked. An Irish behind relieved the tension, while their solid
defending denied Riewoldt at the other end. Betts added one point and Gray three,
but Ireland came close to sealing the match when what would have been McManus’
second goal bounced off the top side of the crossbar.
Australia needed something special, and it
came one minute later. West Coast’s Andrew Gaff crossed and Betts flew over a bi-national
group of players to punch the ball in for a goal. A score review was needed to
check whether the Crows’ goalsneak had fallen foul of the ‘square ball’ rule
(Gaelic football’s equivalent of an offside law, which bars attackers from
entering the six-yard box before the ball has done so), but the ‘all clear’ was
given, and Australia were within six points. Another cross from Gaff resulted
in an over to Gray, and the margin was down to three (55-52) with as many
minutes remaining.
Having already scored four overs, Brogan
looked to have the match won for Ireland when he went one-on-one with Fletcher
in the dying minutes. But the retiring Essendon veteran effected a superb
tackle, forcing play back to the twenty-metre line for what was only the second
ball-up of the match. Australia looked to take the ball out from the back, but
Ireland regained possession and strung together a chain of marks – not a
feature of their code – to run down the clock. It was Brogan who put the result
beyond doubt when the Dublin forward scored a behind with thirty-two seconds
remaining.
It was a splendid encounter on a chilly
Dublin night, and the Irish were deserved winners of the Cormac McAnallen Cup.
Geelong defender Harry Taylor was awarded the Jim Stynes Medal as Australia’s
best on ground, though the other Cat in the side, stoppage king Paddy
Dangerfield was ineffective in the largely stoppage-free hybrid code.
Last year, when Australia handily defeated
Ireland in Perth, I was unimpressed by the match. Specifically, I felt that the
near-amateur Irish exerted a lack of defensive pressure on their
better-conditioned opponents. This time around, however, the match was a much
better spectacle. The hosts, playing in a more accommodating climate than Perth
in November, and having selected players suited to the hybrid code rather than
following the Australian policy of handing out lifetime achievement guernseys
to past all-Australians, were able to swarm the Australian ball-carrier and
punish the antipodeans’ lack of polish with the round ball.
I also cannot stress enough the most
important statistic of the night: two stoppages. That’s not a misprint: AFL
matches this year averaged 73, and that number is on an upward trend due to the
speeding-up of the game and the interchange cap. With the round ball and the
prohibitions against taking possession while being on one’s knees and diving on
the ball, International Rules is a breath of fresh air when set against the
stoppage-infested ‘third rugby code’ that footy has turned into in the
Demetriou-McLachlan Era.
And it wasn’t just the lack of stoppages that
impressed me in this match: with their natural feel for the round ball, the
Irish were able to keep the ball in perpetual motion, tapping it backwards over
their heads to teammates and diving to knock it to advantage.
For the AFL and the Gaelic Athletic
Association, International Rules is just a hybrid sport which facilitates
international competition between the two organisations. But this is a
fantastic sport in its own right, and one which deserves to be played at the
highest level more than once per year.
For years, there have been calls for the
inclusion of the New York and London Gaelic football teams, both of whom
participate in the all-Ireland championship, to turn the International Rules
Series into a triangular or quadrangular tournament. A more radical idea would
be to incorporate elements of soccer, one example being place-kicked free
kicks, which were historically a feature of Gaelic football. If players from
the lower reaches of professional soccer could be encouraged to take up the
hybrid code, we could have an International Rules World Cup.
A more realistic goal would be to
incorporate some aspects of International Rules into Australian football:
specifically the prohibition of taking possession while on one’s knees and the
rule against stringing together more than six handpasses. The first should
reduce this blog’s bête noire,
congestion, by stopping players from diving on loose balls that they have no
hope of handballing to advantage. The second would be aimed at bringing back
the long kick to a contest, historically one of football’s key aesthetic
features, and this should help with congestion by drawing players back into
their forward and back lines and away from the 36-man midfield scrimmage.
Ireland 3.11.5.56 – Australia 1.13.7.52
Goals: O’Shea 4’ (Q1), 3’ (Q2); McManus 12’
(Q2, pen.) (Ire.); Betts 13’ (Q4) (Aust.)
Overs: Brogan 4, McManus 3, Connolly,
Hughes, Keegan, O’Shea (Ire.); Gray 3, Betts 2, Riewoldt 2, Ballantyne, Breust,
Heppell, Montagna, Mundy, Roughead (Aust.)
No comments:
Post a Comment