Roaming netminders may be shackled by new rules but role will simply evolve again

THERE was a time — not long ago — when the goalkeeper in Gaelic football had discovered a second life.

- BY GARRY DOYLE

He was no longer merely the custodian of calamity.

He crossed halfway lines with impunity. He joined attacks. He took frees. He influenced games in ways that once would have been laughed out of parish halls.

And then the rules changed.

Since the reforms associated with Jim Gavin's Football Review Committee, the pendulum has swung again.

The roaming era has not vanished entirely — evolution rarely works in absolutes — but it has been steered back towards something more recognisable.

And at the centre of that conversation stands Niall Morgan, once the poster boy for the liberated goalkeeper, now its most thoughtful critic.

“No, definitely not. It has definitely diminished the role” Morgan says when asked if the goalkeeper is as influential as two years ago.

There is no bitterness in his tone. Only realism. And he has his backers.

Former Kerry goalkeeper Brendan Kealy was scathing about the role's transformation under recent rule-tweaks, accusing the GAA of “dumbing down” the tactical nuance that had made top ‘keepers special.

His gripe wasn't with the concept of evolution, but with eroding the subtlety that distinguished an elite goalkeeper from a mere foot soldier.

Morgan adds: “Twas one of the roaming ‘keepers and got a lot of time on the ball. Id say at the weekend I maybe crossed the halfway line once. So that side of it has probably gone”

Once in key Championship games, Morgan and Monaghan's Rory Beggan (below) would meet in midfield like renegade playmakers.

Goalkeepers marking space in the centre circle. It felt, to traditionalists, faintly absurd.

Now Morgan smiles at the memory.

“Probably at some stage in years ahead of us, people will watch back them games and think, “What was going on? Why were the goalkeepers doing that?”

That era, he accepts, may already be folklore.