How in the name of gawd is there different rules for club and intercounty gaelic football?
Well it isn't difficult to speculate what might be the reason in the case of the rule I mentioned. It may have been felt that the rule was needed most at intercounty-level where the cynical accidentally-on-purpose or openly-on-purpose stuff is at its greatest, and certainly is most visible and most influences how the game is played at other levels. But at the same time it's quite a burden on refs and other match officials to police. I am guessing that this is why it is intercounty only. It may change in time.
Are the rules different for national club championship and internal club championships?
None significant that I am aware of. But I wouldn't be surprised if there were exceptions.
I have heard for example that the application of the one-hop-one-solo limit below a certain age was, at least at one time, not universally applied across regions within County Cork.
No wonder the GAA is dying.
Rules have to evolve. For that to be effective, a certain agility and toleration is needed so that we can at times see how they work out before applying more generally, and indeed to be able to apply them in come contexts and not in others.
IF the GAA is dying (an important subject for discussion itself), that certainly isn't a reason. I suggest that the more relevant factor is a gradual (and thus mostly unnoticed) loss of a raison-d'etre, given 100 years of independence in 26 counties, and more recently an agreed settlement of sorts in the other 6, all of which has reduced the imperative for national rehabilitation which the GAA was part of over 100 years ago. A cultural-memory is not enough to keep the games going forever. Lots of sporting and cultural organizations bring benefits - we need to think through what
unique ones the GAA brings or could bring. If we can't give a
1st or second-generation immigrant mother or father a compelling reason, which we ourselves believe in, why playing GAA is better for their child than playing any another sport, then yes the GAA will die (our native population is producing at below replacement-rate - we will be a country of immigrants - and anyway our native population won't play either without that question being authentically answered). We have some answers to that, but we need to focus more on it.
