Football Review Committee need to spring clean rather than clear out

One look – us Irish fathers know the one. We've been caught. At it again. It’s like we can’t help ourselves. We try to explain ourselves, deflect, plead innocence but it’s no use.

Football conversations this time of year, they draw you in. Sure, they maybe shouldn’t draw you in so much that you forget to notice your child leaving the pirate pool and getting lost enough to end up with the lifeguard but still.

The look from my better half meant I knew she knew. That it was Cian Ward, of Meath and Smaller Fish fame, I was chatting bought me zero mitigation. Caught again chatting ball when supposed to be at other things, there goes the brownie points.

The topic which cost me? What else but the rules.

Fair enough it was a few weeks ago when the Allianz Football League was heading towards preordained finals and before we had that Derry and Dublin game, but for much of this year I doubt it’ll be very far from the topic of discussion.

Even after that breathless league final, analysis focused not just on the brilliant mayhem in the game but on where this leaves the group of people charged with improving it.

Jarlath Burns speech reflected perfectly the 'hell yeah’ emotion that a game like that conjures up in us. I could imagine him late that night as he’d settled himself, ringing Jim Gavin and, channelling his best Liam Neeson, telling him, ‘if you hurt this game I love, I will find you, and I will kill you’.

The impossible puzzle facing his rules committee was laid bare last weekend and, I’ve no doubt, will be in full view this weekend as we enter the provincial championships.

The game can be at its best ever and worst ever on the same weekend. Or, as in the Armagh Donegal final, in the same game. When teams are very defensive and