Goalkeepers are feeling the heat right now, from all sides, but they are also a house divided. Never mind the long-established Goalkeepers’ Union – would representatives of the regular goalies, the sweeper-keepers and the recently relocated outfielders even talk to each other at the monthly meetings?
Shop steward Niall Morgan has been having his say on the number one bone of contention people have with number ones currently – their presence in the opposition half, creating 12 v 11 overlaps.
“It would not be my role any more,” said Morgan last week, when he was presented with the idea of potentially being restricted to his goal line. “I genuinely don’t see where you would get any enjoyment out of playing that role. If they stop the goalkeeper from going forward altogether, there’s going to be a number of goalkeepers would walk away.”
He also claimed that any limits placed on goalkeepers now would only be “taking away an advantage that the likes of Tyrone, Monaghan and Armagh have on other teams”.
We might start with the last point first. With all due respect to Morgan, this is a profound misunderstanding of the problem as people see it.
When I went to see Galway against Armagh in the opening round of the league in Pearse Stadium, I was shocked to see Conor Gleeson come out of his goal much more regularly than he had ever done before under the previous rules. If he went up there and simply stood about 60 metres from the opposition goal and hand-passed the ball left and right to his wing backs and midfielders he was offering nothing, it seemed.
He wasn’t offering anything constructive on the ball, but he was offering something more important than that – control. No matter where or how often Galway probed the Armagh defence, they always had the safety valve – a pass back to Gleeson. That has been replicated throughout the league thus far.
The abolition of the 12 v 11 is therefore not aimed purely at those goalkeepers who are capable of adding substantially to their team on the scoreboard. We are seeing keepers who previously had no interest in venturing up the field now being asked to do it. That’s the new reality.
There are other teething problems. Derry manager Paddy Tally was interviewed on TG4 before their game against Galway two weekends ago, and he was asked about his decision to persist with Neil McNicholl, an outfield player who had started the previous week against Kerry and conceded five goals.
In Tally’s mind, there just isn’t a role any more for a traditional shot-stopper. This is certainly a point of view. But about 30 minutes after that interview aired, Paul Conroy sent Dylan McHugh through on goal. McHugh’s shot was poorly hit, straight down the middle of the goal, but McNicholl had jumped out of the way of it.
To Tally’s credit, he stuck with his man for their game in Croke Park against the Dubs last weekend – and McNicholl then promptly let two shots in under his crossbar from 13m out. If you’re conceding goals at that rate, you’d have to be pretty spectacular up the other end.
So managers, and keepers, are trying to adjust. Amid all this, kick-outs are now going long 79 per cent of the time in this league, according to the Games Intelligence Unit – having been at pretty much 50 per cent for the last two championship seasons. Managers are bemoaning the lack of control they can exert on kick-outs, to which the nation at large is ... supremely nonplussed.
If goalkeepers can’t be sure of retaining possession from kick-outs, the punishment for a wide is far less. A wide need not be followed by chasing the ball forlornly for four minutes, as was often the case last year. And fans love it. They wanted contests for possession, and they’re getting it from kick-outs.
The Games Intelligence Unit also revealed that the ratio of handpasses to kick-passes has stayed basically static from the last two championships, although the solo-and-go is a complicating factor here – free-kicks were counted as kick-passes in the last two years, and obviously not all of those are now kick-passes. The number of handpasses may be static because the goalie is always there to receive the ball from lads who couldn’t be bothered trying to kick the ball forward.
Remove that comfort blanket and maybe that number comes down. Regardless of that, if the number of handpasses remains static, but the number of turnovers of possession goes through the roof, no one is going to care too much.
There were four turnovers in the first minute of the Kerry-Tyrone game last Sunday, and that’s what people want. They want the team out of possession to be able to convincingly and successfully press the team in possession. Coaches are naturally risk-averse. The argument that teams would press higher up the field, thereby negating the possibility of the keeper advancing into the opponent’s half, just hasn’t materialised.
The 12 v 11 debate looks like it’s going in one direction, regardless of Morgan. He doesn’t see a future for him in the game without that rule, and that would be a pity if it comes to pass. But last season, everyone had to play like a wing forward, including goalkeepers. If this season sees a return to old-fashioned corner backs and corner forwards, old-fashioned big lumps in midfield, and old-fashioned goalkeepers, then the great unwashed may well say – “we’ve got our game back”.
