The Derry man and All-Ireland winner Joe Brolly has some great ideas of how to enhance the game of Gaelic football and make it more enjoyable for viewers to watch. Speaking to Tomás Ó Sé on his podcast the former RTE pundit suggests the following quoted by balls.ie

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“It’s the rule-makers’ fault. I’ve been arguing it for many years, as you have, the problem is that the rule-makers have is that they have not focused on the correct principle. The correct principle is ‘make the game a spectacle’, ensure that it’s a spectacle.

Forget about what a manager thinks, forget about the concept of winning, which are now the principles that dominate the game. We have let these managers, particularly Jim McGuinness and what has come from that, to dominate the game without the rule-makers taking any steps to change that.

We need to do what happened with rugby and basketball.

There are a number of simple things.

The ball should never be passed to the goalkeeper under any circumstances. The goalkeeper can win a ball if it comes to him from another team, but you cannot pass it to him. That immediately encourages the opposing team to press up and it stops teams from killing the game from just playing the ball to the goalkeeper, moving the ball around.

Second rule is you must kick the ball out beyond the 45′. I don’t care if you say it’s a skill to kick the ball short and hold and retain possession, it must be a contest. You enforce the contest. The rule makers should say ‘I don’t really care what you think about that, kick-outs must go beyond the 45’.

Thirdly, the ball can’t go back over the halfway line.

The fourth thing, and this would be relatively easy to do because they’ve done it in aussie rules, is instead of having a highly trained referee deciding whether the ball is gone over the sideline on each side, you put one in each half and zonal defending is out.

There is no sweeper. As soon as a man drops off and into a space in front, it’s a 21-yard free in front of the goals. You enforce the spectacle.

There are a number of other things you would do in relation to cynical fouling. I don’t know if you watch the NBA, but they completely changed the game at the end of the 70s and start of the 80s and continue every year to make it more of a spectacle. They don’t care about winning. The rule makers should care about the spectacle and enforcing contests.”