The death of gaelic football? Tomas O Se isn't pressing the panic button just yet.

Last year's two All-Ireland SFC semi-finals prove the game is 'largely fine' argues the five-time All-Ireland winner in today's Irish Independent.

"What was the vibe about Gaelic football last August? The All-Ireland semi-finals were as good as anything seen in years and, if the final was a little too tactical for some tastes, it wasn't exactly a grim eye-sore," he writes.

"So I don't know what Jarlath Burns was thinking last Saturday night when he tweeted that he was "seeing the death of Gaelic football". Now don't get me wrong. I was following the game myself on Twitter and, on seeing the half-time score (0-3 to 0-2), I tweeted "That's not football".

"The difference is I'm not the Standing Rules Committee chairman.

"But maybe we're all a little guilty in this regard of making sweeping statements about a game that, like every other, has its good days and its bad.

"Let's get something straight here. The game is largely fine. It needs tweaking, not reconstructive surgery. Make it too open and, trust me, given more space, the likes of Kerry, Dublin and Mayo would stretch well clear of the rest.

"The history of the game is a history of changing the terms of engagement. Good teams adjust. I was on the Kerry team that played Donegal in the 2012 Championship. We set up to play in an orthodox way and got beaten. So how would it have made sense for Eamonn Fitzmaurice to set up Kerry the same way two years later?

"That said, I would be completely against the defence-orientated game, with its over-emphasis on hand-passing and the retention of possession, being coached at club and under-age level.

"I don't blame senior inter-county managers for setting up defensively, but I worry that a lot of the drills our young players are being exposed to now are almost anti-football."

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