Finals show concerns over ladies football as a spectacle

By Kevin Egan

Nearly three weeks ago now, the All-Ireland hurling championship came to an end, drawing a line under a season that has raised a lot of questions about the health of the sport.

As if to hammer home the point, Mayo’s incredible win a week later was the final act in a sensational year of football that was packed with good news stories, intriguing storylines and ferociously competitive and enjoyable games.

Then last weekend it was time for ladies football season to finish up, and here too, the final verdict was hardly positive, notwithstanding the joy that was felt in Galway, Roscommon and Antrim on the back of their final day victories.

The Australians certainly didn’t do the LGFA any favours, hosting their “Australia versus Ireland” contest on the same weekend, highlighting the sheer scale of the exodus from our country to theirs, albeit with a wide range of different motivations for each of the 45 or so Irish players that are down there in the AFLW.

But that game was then followed by a treble header in Croke Park where: (1) Antrim underachieved and fell over the line with a team that many people said should have been good enough to compete in intermediate; (2) Roscommon crushed a Fermanagh side that looked shell-shocked, conceding two overhead goals that while very welcome to the Rossies, aren’t a good look for an elite sport (3); Galway and Kerry played out a arm-wrestle of a final, laden with unforced errors, only for a controversial finale to mask that reality.

Talk of concern about the attendance (26,471) is a little overblown. Since 2013, ever final bar one has had either Meath or Dublin involved, sometimes both, and it’s a very different thing to get to Croke Park from Kilmacud, Ballyboden or Navan than it is to get there from Dingle or Clifden. There were 30,000 supporters there for the Kerry versus Galway final two years ago, but you did have Louth in the junior decider that day too.

However when it comes to the sport as a spectacle, the concerns are quite real, and they won’t be easily addressed. Shaquille O’Neal (this is relevant, I promise!) often argues that one of the biggest things holding back the WNBA in America is that there is no dunking in their game. Like the NBA, their hoop is ten feet off the ground, but WNBA players average six foot one in height, as opposed to six foot seven in the NBA. Add in the explosiveness differential that comes with male biology and so a common and spectacular part of the men’s game is absent from the women’s code.

Likewise in ladies football, the sport brought in new rules for the 2026 season, hoping to surf the wave of popularity that the men’s game has enjoyed since Jim Gavin and the Football Review Committee redesigned the sport.

Most would say that LGFA games are better for their suite of changes, but it still feels a little bit like a child making their First Communion in a hand-me-down outfit. They might look a little bit better than when wearing a Cúl Camps jersey, but they’re still trying to make the best of something that was made for someone else.

Their two-point arc is largely irrelevant, as evidenced by precisely zero two-pointers being kicked across all three of Sunday’s finals. The high mark at midfield is often the same since kickouts don’t travel as far and with the same trajectory either, hence the number of marks across the three matches on Sunday could be counted with the fingers of one hand.

The three-up/breach rule is possibly a slight improvement on where things were before, but because 50-metre kick passes are not a feature of ladies football - again due to simple physiology - the fast, electrifying counter attacks in men’s football that start with a long kick into one of the three attackers are non-existent; nearly all attacks are still undertaken into a set, populated defence.

The increased physicality is welcomed, even if the threshold of acceptability can vary from one referee to another, but nobody would dream of saying that the game is far more enjoyable to watch than it was a year ago. Dublin’s win over Cork in this year’s quarter-final clash at Parnell Park was a fantastic match, but outside of that, highlights were very rare.

It’s perhaps a little harsh to bring all this up, because a lot of the obvious solutions are far outside the remit of the LGFA. Pitches are still designed for GAA first and foremost so we’re not going to get another two-point arc 35 metres out, and we’re not going to get adjustable crossbars that can drop down below the 2.5m height that is in place for the men’s game.

The LGFA can’t go professional and they can’t fix the housing crisis that is driving so many young people to think that their future needs to be forged on foreign soil, so by no measure is there is a simple prescription for the ailments of the game, and neither is it fair to say that the sport is in a really bad way. Much like hurling, there are several aspects where things are very healthy, and next year’s senior All-Ireland race will start with at least six or seven teams believing they can win the big prize, which is a solid foundation.

What they can’t do, however, is feel that the problems have been fixed, and that the status quo is fine for the foreseeable future.