Tyrone’s Niall Morgan believes some goalkeepers would quit the game if the Football Review Committee forced netminders to remain in their own half of the field.
After three weekends of the new rules, one of the main talking points continues to focus on the capability of goalkeepers to now tilt the overload balance firmly in favour of the attacking team.
Several managers have strongly criticised what they see as a flaw in the rules, feeling it provides a plus one scenario that skews the game. In this strange new world of Gaelic football enhancements, a team’s number one has metamorphosed to become a pivotal 12th man.
Derry manager Paddy Tally claimed “the 12th man is killing the game”, while Louth boss Ger Brennan said the 12 v 11 scenario is something the FRC will “have to look at”.
But Morgan isn’t buying the Public Enemy Number One label some managers and pundits are trying to stick on goalkeepers – and the two-time All Star goalkeeper feels any drastic changes would lead to some players simply hanging up their gloves.
“If they stop the goalkeeper from going forward altogether there’s going to be a number of goalkeepers who’ll walk away,” says Morgan.
“I think it would be a massive step backwards. I think the game has evolved so much over the last 10-15-20 years and I think the changes that have been made have been positive in large ways. At the end of the day, the scorelines are high and (the game) probably is more entertaining.”
The rules currently in use permit the goalkeeper to only receive possession from a team-mate either when they cross the halfway line, or when both the goalkeeper and the team-mate passing the ball are inside the large rectangle. Early indications suggest that while it has obliterated the plague of back passes to goalkeepers, the rule has also exposed an unintended consequence of the 3v3 rule.
Essentially, teams with a goalkeeper capable of getting up the field and adding to the attack have an advantage over sides with stay-at-home netminders, potentially making the goalkeeper one of the most important players on a team.
There have been suggestions the FRC could revisit the matter and ban goalkeepers from entering the opposition half of the field – taking a blunt instrument approach to address a nuanced issue that would significantly downsize the goalkeeper’s role.
“It would not be my role any more, I genuinely don’t see where you would get any enjoyment out of playing that role,” says Morgan of that particular scenario. “At the end of the day the game has developed so much, it has moved forward and I think making a drastic change like that would just pull it back.
“We’re seeing young lads now wanting to be a goalkeeper, wanting to be picked, wanting to be wearing the different colour jersey, wanting to wear goalkeeping gloves, and I think telling them they have to stay on the line would just revert the game back so much. I think the rule change has been actually really positive because it has stopped that sort of lateral passing in your own half.”
Morgan has been central to the evolution of the goalkeeping position in Gaelic football and he continues to test the boundaries of what is possible under the new rules. With just three rounds of the league played so far, he hopes there is no knee-jerk reaction from the FRC.
“I just think ‘let it run’. You can’t make judgments off (a few) games in the middle of winter that these rules don’t work. When there was a gale-force wind in Armagh and Ethan Rafferty kicked (five) points against Tyrone. How people looked at that game and see it as a negative, I just don’t know.”
One of the frustrations for Morgan is the terminology that has grown around the matter.
“It’s strange, and it’s probably frustrating for me because people are now calling it the 12v11 rule,” he adds. “For starters, it’s not a rule that the ‘keeper has to come up. And it’s also 12v12, it’s no different to last year when it was 15v15, but now that the teams are leaving three up and three back, now magically a player on the team is disappearing.
“A friend of mine keeps texting me saying, ‘When is the team that’s defending going to push their ‘keeper out?’”
Morgan accepts his opinion on the new rules might not tally with all goalkeepers but he doesn’t believe the FRC should react because of some early-season criticism.
“That would be my take on it, but at the end of the day I don’t make the decisions. There’s probably some goalkeeper sitting somewhere going, ‘Please, just let me stay back because I don’t want to (go outfield), I’m happy to be an out-and-out goalkeeper'.
“But if it’s an advantage for a team to have somebody that can do both roles, then why do you take that away? I heard Paddy Andrews saying it’s like telling David Clifford that he’s making a fool out of defenders, tell him to stop shooting.
“It’s taking away an advantage that the likes of Tyrone, Monaghan, Armagh really have on other teams and I think it would nearly be indicative of, ‘We don’t want those teams to win, so we’ll take away their advantage’.”
