Long ago, during one of those grinding, groaning Dáil debates on budget day, it fell to Fine Gael’s Michael Noonan to deliver the soundbite for the evening news. Brian Lenihan had brought in a measure cutting child allowance for the third child in a family – this was during the crash, when governments were in full panic mode and no idea was too stupid to say out loud. Noonan had plenty of faults as a politician but he could spot an absurdity a mile off.
“Minister, what have you got against third children?” he inquired. “The fourth child won’t be cut, the fifth child won’t be cut, the 16th child won’t be cut. Did some third child beat you up coming home from school as a young fella?”
With the third round of the Allianz Football League upon us, there’s a feeling abroad that goalkeepers are very much the third children of the new rules. Or at least they’re in danger of assuming that role, as the 12-v-11 scenario seems to be the one most in danger of getting torpedoed.
To recap, for the sane and healthy folk who are only taking a passing interest. Under the new rules, goalkeepers are mostly excluded from play in their own half but can receive a pass from a team-mate in the opposition half. And since the opposition have to keep three players up at all times, the goalkeeper is now an extra outfield player.
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In effect, the rule has gerrymandered the pitch, meaning the attacking team has 12 outfield players to play against 11 defenders. Unless the defending team brings its goalie out of nets to match up, the attacking team has one player spare at all times. Plus, they have more space in which to use this spare player than they had before, back when the opposition could put all 15 behind the ball.
Any time you bring up the glaring unfairness of a rule that gives one team an unmatchable attacking advantage, you get a string of goalkeeping Michael Noonans chirping at you. What have you got against goalkeepers? Did some goalkeeper beat you up coming home from school as a young fella?
Fair enough. But the problem for the goalies is that it isn’t just a few nosy-parker columnists who are getting queasy about it all. These are early days and nothing is set in stone – but it already seems like the people most invested in the new rules are having their doubts.
“The rule we talked about most is the 12 v 11, with the goalkeeper coming up,” said James Horan on The Examiner football podcast last Monday. Horan was relaying the details of the FRC’s meeting over last weekend in Abbotstown in which Jim Gavin’s committee went through the first two rounds of games and drilled into the statistics and surveys that had come out of them.
“That’s a huge one ... We need to analyse that and see how that plays out. Does it in some way balance out over time? Which would be my hope that teams would find a way to neutralise that. Or will it cause an issue? We need to see that over more games.”
Horan is right, of course, to be non-committal at this stage. Two rounds of league football in winter conditions don’t definitively prove a whole pile of anything. Maybe, as time wears on and defending teams get ever more ruthless in closing off space, maybe allowing a spare attacker will come to be seen as a valuable escape valve.
Goalkeepers certainly think so. In search of a bit of balance, we rang up Offaly number one Paddy Dunican after his net-buster goal against Laois in round two. It was a stunning strike, an adornment to any match. As you might well imagine, Dunican doesn’t think the chance to do that should be taken away from those who can.
“Keepers get blamed for everything!” he laughs. “Ah look, I don’t know how you can watch Ethan Rafferty in Armagh’s game against Tyrone and say, ‘Actually, no, we should limit his possessions’. I find it bizarre really that people are basically saying that he should stay inside his own 20-metre line and not be involved in the game.
“The commitment and dedication and skill involved in being an intercounty goalkeeper, I don’t think people realise it. And then you’re going to say to them, ‘Well no, you can only catch it and kick it out as far as you can.’ What would be the point of lads trying to improve? I don’t mean this to come across the wrong way but you could get nearly anyone to do that. This is the way the game has evolved and I think we should be a bit more accepting of it.”
Dunican wouldn’t claim to be an impartial voice in all of this but that doesn’t make his view any less relevant. And he’s right about the evolution of the game, of course. Players such as him and Rafferty and Niall Morgan and Rory Beggan have added plenty to the sport over the past few years, at a time when an X-factor goalie has been one of the few attacking innovations.
But when it comes right down to it, that evolution was a symptom of the wider fugue state that football had got itself into. Goalkeepers coming forward never would have happened when teams naturally kept their forwards up the pitch. They could only do it in the past decade because the opposition retreated and let them at it.
An extra attacker against 14 defenders is a reasonably fair fight. Deathly dull to watch but at least there isn’t a thumb on the scale. Changing it to 12 v 11 is a different story. Creating a spare man should be a hard-won prize in any attack but this rule automatically does it for you. And short of emptying their own net, there’s nothing the defending team can do about it. That can’t be right.
It probably doesn’t help the goalies’ cause that the other rules already look like they have plenty to recommend them. A game with the 3-v-3 structure, where the kick-outs have to pass the 40m arc, where the solo-and-go keeps the action moving forward – there might be enough in there to achieve the FRC’s aims. Throw in the dissent measures and tidy up the stuff around bringing frees out beyond the arc and it’s not obvious why you need automatic overloads.
This is all soft talk and maybe the remaining rounds of the league will bring a different perspective on the 12-v-11 problem. Given the evidence so far, it’s hard to imagine what that might be.
