Galway manager Liam Sammon believes the basic skills of Gaelic football are suffering because of overuse of the hand-pass game. Sammon is the second oldest inter-county manager on the scene at the moment after Mick O'Dwyer, having played in an All-Ireland final in 1966, and admits he would like to see a return of 'kick and catch' football. Speaking ahead of Sunday's Connacht SFC opener against Roscommon at Pearse Stadium, the 61-year-old said: "I played up until 1990 myself with the club, so I came through a lot of those changes. You adapt to it. "The handpass came in, I adapted to that and I used it to my advantage and used it to the advantage of the teams I was coaching. The downside of the way the game has evolved is the amount of fisted passes, as opposed to kick passes. I would like to see that change. "I think most of the fist passes are happening in your half of the pitch and I think that's where the problem lies. If there was some curtailment there it might do the game a lot of good. "The core skills are certainly kicking and passing and that's what people want to see - good kicking, good catching. "There are excellent kickers around but sometimes it seems that all teams are trying to do is retain the ball at all costs, pass for the sake of passing rather than with real purpose." Tweet

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