Darragh Ó Sé: Teams have more to lose than gain by letting goalkeepers roam free

I heard somewhere that the BBC gave Rory Beggan Man of the Match on Sunday.

If so, that has to be the first time a goalkeeper has let in three goals and walked away with a nice bit of crystal for himself. Definitely in an Ulster championship match anyway, where a goalie used have to go into hiding if he let in three goals in a campaign. What’s next – All Stars for full-forwards who don’t score?

I know we’re all supposed to be embracing this new world where goalies are the key men in attack but I have to say I’m still a bit suspicious about it all. Beggan scored three points on Sunday, including one from play. But he also missed three frees and the game ended with Cavan’s Paddy Lynch scoring into an open goal from 40 yards out. That seems like bad value to me.

Intercounty football is a highly skilled gig. People lose sight of this all the time. Because so much of the game is handpassing and running now, it has fooled people into thinking that anybody who can do the basics is worth having on the ball. I look at it a different way.

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To me, you need to prioritise the players who are best on the ball. When everything is tight and packed, the idea should be to get possession to the best kickers, the quickest thinkers, the lads who have the most football in them.

Rory Beggan is a better footballer now than when he started coming out the pitch a few years back. And obviously he is a great asset from placed balls. But he still kicks and handpasses exclusively off one side and he is too big and cumbersome to be able to beat a tackle.

You can say something similar about Odhran Lynch in Derry. He’s a big man and a fine kicker, well able to play decent passes inside. But there are a couple of times in every game where it looks like he fancies himself as something more than just an extra body out the field. He strikes me as being too much of an accident waiting to happen in a team that is going for an All-Ireland.

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The likes of Niall Morgan and Ethan Rafferty are a small bit different because they’re basically intercounty standard outfield players who have become goalkeepers. They are both fast on their feet and they look to inject pace into an attack. Far too many goalkeepers slow the whole thing down when they’re on the ball.

That’s my biggest issue with the trend. I look at Shane Ryan in Kerry, who plays in the forwards for his club Rathmore. But with the best will in the world, he’s a good club player who isn’t an intercounty standard forward. So when he joins the Kerry attack and gets his hands on the ball, it means that six intercounty class Kerry forwards don’t have it.

The whole thing ripples through the team as well. When a goalkeeper is loitering around the attack, players will naturally give the ball to them because it’s the easy pass. There’s no risk involved. Your possession stats don’t take a hit if you play a handy sideways ball to the goalie. Also, there has to be a voice in some of these players’ heads saying: “Well, if he’s up here, I should use him. That’s part of the game plan I guess”.

Lynch was brilliant with his long kick-outs in the league final. He has a huge boomer kick on him and when the Dubs pushed up, he was able to plant it over them all and get Derry in behind for a goal chance. Every time it worked, I was looking at it going: “Why aren’t you doing that the whole time? You have Conor Glass and Brendan Rogers out there – kick it to them”.

But of course if he did kick it long the whole time, he wouldn’t be as involved in the play. All these goalies know that a tap of a kick-out to a corner back will be worked back to them and soon they’ll be the one bringing the ball up the pitch. For years, goalkeepers were stuck to their line and told not to go anywhere. Now they’re free at last and they’re loving life.

At what cost, though? Let’s take Kerry for an example. Every time Shane Ryan works the ball short and takes up possession, he’s depriving his midfielders of practice at the one thing they need to get better at. Kerry don’t have David Moran any more to just pump the ball out long to. They have some combination of Diarmuid O’Connor and Joe O’Connor and Barry Dan O’Sullivan, all younger players making their way.

I played midfield for long enough to learn what my goalkeepers were going to do. I knew that Declan O’Keefe’s ball flight would be low and fast. I knew Diarmuid Murphy’s ball flight would by high and long and looping. I learned how to time my jump, how to disguise my run, where to be and where not to be.

But if those two lads had taken half their kick-outs short so as to get involved in the play themselves, it would have taken me twice as long to get up to the standard needed. The big problem for Kerry is that when Ryan absolutely has to get a kick-out away long, that relationship with his midfielders hasn’t enough depth to it to become automatic.

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In Croke Park in the league, the Dubs pushed away up at one stage and there was no short option for Ryan. He ended up having to hurry his kick and it meant that Joe O’Connor was caught a few yards on the wrong side of Brian Fenton. It led to the farcical situation where Fenton was jumping against Dara Moynihan. No fault to Dara but there’s only going to be one winner there.

I know people say you have to be mad to be a goalkeeper. But it feels like the lunatics have taken over the asylum a small bit here.