Dublin and Derry's historically boring encounter last Saturday provoked a wave of 'state of the game' handwringing in the days following. It also prompted Joe Brolly, in a performance adorned with a couple of stylishly employed expletives, to declare he will not be attending Derry matches in the future. See here.
A minority of tenacious dissenters have accused the aghast majority of looking at the past through distorted lenses. Ewan MacKenna has pointed out that last summer's championship gave us the highest average points per game in championship history.
So, what is the state of the game? GAA performance analyst and advisor to the last two Irish international rules sides, Rob Carroll (yes, purists, he is a 'statistician' but please hear him out) has tweeted out a statistical breakdown of Dublin-Kerry games from two different eras.
The first comes from a game nestled in the era most beloved of the purists, the 1975 All-Ireland final, while the latter, is a perhaps unrepresentative, buccaneering encounter from the modern era, the 2013 All-Ireland semi-final.
The 1975 final revisited and compared to a modern classic. pic.twitter.com/pw4tdInhGT
— Rob Carroll (@gaelicstats) April 1, 2015
One of the stand-out details is the number of handpasses in the 2013 match, which have sky-rocketed in the past 38 years. However, the accuracy of foot-passing has greatly increased. Back in 1975, the foot-passing accuracy levels weren't a whole lot better 50%, indicating that a fair number of them were probably barely 'passes' at all but merely agricultural h0ofs. Shooting accuracy has also improved hugely in the past 38 years.
