GAA Football Review Committee memeber Colm Collins. Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile
By Paul Keane
Football Review Committee member Colm Collins said he couldn't take his eyes off the Allianz interprovincial series final action as Ulster edged a dramatic final at Croke Park.
Penalties were required in the end to separate Ulster and Connacht on an evening when the FRC's new scoring system took centre stage.
Connacht scored four goals - they hit 4-15 in total - and with four points for each of those majors under the FRC's 'rules enhancements', they were crucial scores that sustained them in the periods when Ulster were at their best.
Meanwhile, the two-point reward for points kicked from on or outside the new 40m arc played a huge role in proceedings too.
Ulster's Rian O'Neill kicked two beauties from long-range, yielding four points, while Connacht's Johnny Heaney slotted his own two-point score at the death to level the game and take it to penalties.
It was Heaney's second two-pointer in a matter of minutes having earlier curled one over from a similar spot just outside the arc on the left.
"That was quite a dream finish in the sense that if you wrote a script for it, you couldn't get it better," said Collins, the former Clare manager. "But I think overall, and I'm just looking at it as an ordinary spectator, I enjoyed the four quarters of that game. I couldn't take my eyes off it. There was a whole load of stuff happening.
"One thing I'd appeal to everyone to keep an open mind about is that this is just a snapshot of what's happening without any coaching.
"So wait until the good coaches get their paws on this and you'll see a massive improvement in, for example, there were loads of occasions where the foot pass was on but fellas who had played in a different way for the last 10 years were slow to adapt.
"But they will adapt very quickly when they're coached. Another simple little thing was that when you have an opportunity for a fisted point, everybody will be coached to go for a goal in that case because it's four points versus one. I think just be patient with it because once it's coached and the players are used to it, it's going to be excellent I think."
