Meath skipper Shane McEntee believes diving is ‘rampant’ in Gaelic football and reckons the GAA should address it.
The versatile half-back criticised officials for the ‘crazy amount of rule changes’ they’ve brought in in recent years.
He’s not a fan of the advanced mark and believes the new rule clamping down on cynical fouling close to goal is too subjective to be properly implemented.
And McEntee, son of Meath manager Andy, feels there’s a glaring problem in the game that has never been addressed at all – simulation.
Speaking on LMFM Radio, McEntee said: “That’s something that’s never been tackled in the GAA. It’s like we kind of bury our heads in the sand over it and say, ‘Oh, that’s a soccer issue’ and it’s rampant at the moment.
“I swallowed my pride after a while and said, ‘Okay, I might try to buy a few frees’ because I was sick of suffering from the other side of it.”
Former Armagh star Jamie Clarke (inset) raised the issue of diving in 2019, claiming some ‘players are jumping to the ground once they get contact’.
McEntee said: “I’ve never heard the GAA talk about it as a problem. That’s something I would far rather see the GAA tackle than ‘you’re not allowed to use the goalkeeper as your next pass’. Which is more of a problem in terms of making the game better as a spectacle? Sometimes I wonder what are the real issues and what are they really trying to tackle.”
On the various rule tweaks and additions for this year’s league, McEntee revealed some refs aren’t even fully up to speed.
The Dunboyne man said: “I think it’s crazy the amount of rule changes that went on. I genuinely can’t think of many other sports that have such a constant turnover.
“In terms of the new rules before games, you’re sometimes running ideas past referees and no discredit to them but they’re saying to you, ‘Yeah, look, I’m not 100 per cent on this one’. And how could they be? They’re trying to keep up to date with a tough enough rule book as it was and then getting all of these thrown in on top of them. I think it’s mad.”
McEntee would prefer if players had a bigger say in the process.
He said: “Not that it’s all about the players but I still think we’re a fairly big stakeholder in the game so it’s a reasonable thing to ask. Sometimes if they do ask players through the GPA, you’ll see the findings going back from the surveys and they may as well not have asked them.”
