Pat Spillane Says New Rules Fail To Solve One Glaring Problem With Gaelic Football

Pat Spillane must feel at least a bit vindicated these days.

For years, the eight-time All-Ireland winner has been one of the most vocal critics of how Gaelic football has evolved, or in his words, devolved into a possession-based, hand-pass obsessed, risk-averse version of the game he once enjoyed so much.

Writing in his column with The Sunday World, Spillane praises the Football Review Committee (FRC) whilst also offering up some further guidance for Jim Gavin and his committee members to consider.

Now having had a full season of rules trialed and subsequently implemented by the FRC, Spillane is celebrating what he calls a much-needed intervention in the sport.

But Pat Spillane is not satisfied just yet, despite welcoming the widespread changes, he feels that there are two areas of the game that must be addressed in order for Gaelic football to continue to improve.

So, am I happy? Of course I am, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be more tweaks to these rules.

Perfection is all about raising the bar even further and getting even better. Just to remind you, the four key priorities of the FRC were to increase kick-passing, high-fielding, long-range point scoring and goal-scoring.

Most definitely, they have increased high-fielding. We’ve seen some wonderful examples and at the same time, long-range points are thankfully back with a bang.

But when it comes to kick-passing and goal-scoring, the stats don’t lie, and these areas still need to be addressed.

Pat Spillane points out that while attempts on goal are up 45% in the 2025 season the number of actual goals scored has barely increased, going from an average of 2.0 per game to 2.1 per game. Simply put, Spillane thinks if the value of a goal becomes 4 points it would entice more players to go for the onion bag.

I think the FRC should double down and reward risk-taking once again by giving four points for a goal.

We’ve seen the alternative so often, and again this year, where players take the easy option and take the hand-pass point, even though they’re one-on-one with a goalkeeper. The hand-pass point is not a skill and it most definitely doesn’t improve the game as a spectacle.

The next item on the Kerry legend's agenda is the ratio of hand-passes to kick-passes within the game. The numbers show that there has been a decrease in the amount of kick-passes per hand-pass in 2025.

So, when it comes to kick-passing, I have to put it bluntly and say that the FRC’s new rules haven’t had the desired effect.

The fact that the number of kick-passes dropped in this year’s championship from 131 per game in 2024 to 90 is the most frightening stat of all.

Despite the widespread satisfaction and his own happiness with the tweaks made to the game Pat Spillane thinks the FRC must continue to examine rule changes and make tweaks to Gaelic football to eventually achieve perfection.