The Noble Art of Goalkeeping

There are many truisms in sport.

Like - Michael Schumacher should not have come back to F1 last season.  He's too old at 42 and has lost the edge that made him virtually unbeatable and arguably the greatest driver in the history of the sport.  He is now consistently outperformed by his team mate Nico Rosberg and is in danger of spoiling his 7 title legacy by looking like a rookie (and a poor one at that).

Like - there is nothing an Australian cricket team or fan likes more than whipping England's arse in an Ashes series.  And vice versa.

Like - heavyweight boxing now is absolute shite compared with the late 60s and 70s, when legends like Frazier, Norton, Foreman and the incomparable Ali were in their prime.

Like - both FIFA and UEFA are rotten to the core and in desperate need of a thorough overhaul to bring honesty and transparency to the way they govern football and manage their respective tournaments.  For that reason, there is as much likelihood of it happening in my lifetime as there is of Jesus Christ the Son of God signing for the mighty Ebbsfleet United for the 2011/2012 Blue Square Bet Premier season.

Another truism used to be that British goalkeepers are the best in the world......

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Well, English mainly.  Go back to the 60s and 70s.  Great names like Gordon Banks, Peter Shilton, Ray Clemence, Phil Parkes (two of them and both brilliant), Joe Corrigan, Peter Bonetti, Alex Stepney....  And more: my boyhood hero, Northern Ireland's magnificent Pat Jennings.  Bob Wilson, the first really good Scottish 'keeper (even though he was English born and bred).  For Wales, Gary Sprake (ok, maybe I'm stretching things a bit with him.....) and later the Binman, Neville Southall.  Then Dave Seaman (shame about the hair.....), Nigel Martyn, Chris Woods, Dave "Lurch" Beasant.  Even "There's Only Two" Andy Gorams was pretty handy for a Scot.  Packy Bonner.

The list goes on and on, but that will do for now.  You get my drift.

Football was different then.  Essentially, we still kicked a pumped up ball of leather (and each other) around a field, trying to get it into a 24ft by 8ft net more often than the other team, the same as teams do now.  But it was harder.  A good bit slower, yes, but HARDER.  For a start the ball was heavier.  You could also kick lumps off the opposition (and have lumps licked off you in return) without some officious twat with a black shirt and a whistle stopping you  - at least not as quickly as nowadays.  The pitches, even at the top level, were largely crap, ploughed fields with little or no grass and prone to flooding (and that's just the Baseball Ground, Derby.....you should have seen my local park pitch, built on  top of a hill: the centre spot was at the top, so you were always kicking uphill and downhill simultaneously).

Boots were heavier too, not carpet slippers, and came in three styles: adidas, Puma or Mitre.  They were always black, with white stripes of different style, and had either moulded rubber soles (for dry pitches at the beginning and end of the season) or soles with screw-in plastic studs (that you could sharpen up a treat with a quick stroll across the car park before kick off, usually for a quick fag - er, cigarette).   Happy days.

For we goalkeepers, the specialist equipment was, by today's standards, not very special at all.  Gloves today are about the size of shovels, with lovely soft rubbery palms that always seem to be sticky no matter how often you use and clean them, with re-inforced fingers to help you avoid painful dislocations and fractures.  The first gloves I owned where endorsed by Ron Springett (Sheffield Wednesday and England, understudy to Gordon Banks in the '66 World Cup).  They were basically string gloves with pimpled rubber strips sown onto the palm to aid grip.  But the thread rotted quickly with washing, and by the season's mid-point (say Christmas) the rubber bits fell off.  The string material itself didn't last much longer, and by the time Easter came around they were gone, fit only for the dustbin.  The Peter Bonetti endorsed gloves were even worse.....a green cotton thing (no rubbery bits) that fell apart after half a dozen washes.  I got through about four pairs one season.  Awful things.  But for half the season we never wore the things anyway......if the pitches were dry and it didn't rain - so the beginning and end of the season - we made do with a mouthful of spit and some dirt rubbed into the palm of the hands instead.  It worked just as well, but left us very prone to dislocated, broken ot sprained fingers.....I did every one of mine by the time I was 23.   Now I'm 58 and I don't have a straight finger or "normal" knuckle to my name, and when the weather gets cold suffer from terrible rheumatic pain in them all.   The best gloves I ever had cost me about 30 bob, from the local garden centre.....strong string gloves, double layered, with dozens of little plasticy pimples moulded into the material front and back.  They were strong gardening gloves, designed to enable you to pull up roses or stinging nettles or bloody great thistles without tearing your hands to bits, so ideal for goalkeeping.  I used and washed them every week for about 5 years, and they were still as good as new when I stopped playing.

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But for us it wasn't only hand injuries. 

We routinely used to dive on the ball at the feet of forwards (or anyone else for that matter) to make a save, and very rarely was there any attempt by them to avoid contact.  Oh, no....you were fair game.   At 16 I broke my nose like that.  The ball was stuck on the six yard line, with about four players kicking at it more or less together, so it was going nowhere quite fast.  I claimed it, dived on it, smothered it quite happily - and my centre half mistook my face for the ball.  There was an almighty crack and blood everywhere.  The trainer came on, poured a bucket of water over my head (his usual treatment), shoved a wad of cotton wool up each nostril, and left me to get on with it.  I did, played out the last half an hour.  Then I went to hospital, and they told me I'd broken my nose (I think the two black eyes were a bit of a giveaway).  By the following week the swelling and bruising had gone down, and I took my place between the sticks for the next match.  I don't consider that at all exceptional, it was what was expected of any 'keeper then, no matter I was still a kid at school.   Eight years later came a repeat performance, only this time it was opposition centre forward, and he did a cracking job, re-locating my nose somewhere in the middle of my left cheek.   That time I went off and at the hosspital after an x-ray (where my very tender and misshapen hooter was shoved hard against the screen) I was told  my nose was broken, come back in a couple of weeks and we'll fix it for you.  When I got home my wife straightened it for me - strangely enough it didn't hurt a bit.  Again, I played the next week. 

It wouldn't happen now.......I can't remember the last time I saw a 'keeper nursing a broken nose on Match of the Day.   But in my youth it was a regular thing, maybe three or four times a season.  Noses, jaws, cheeks, sometimes all three at once......great in colour.  I remember a young lad playing for Charlton, Graham Tutt I think his name was, getting a whack in the face at (I think) Sunderland and going off on a stretcher with the left side of his face basically destroyed.  He never played again.  The bloke who kicked him wasn't even booked.

Concussion was pretty common too.  Now, when anyone goes up for a header, they raise their arms - it helps get you airborne, basic physics.  Now and then, players do it a bit more enthusiastically, and are generally booked for dangerous play - leading with the arm.   Very rarely is anyone seriously hurt by these collisions.  But in my day forwards challenging a 'keeper for a high ball routinely "led with the arm", generally in a way that Bruce Lee could have learned a lot from.  Result?  Smelling salts for the 'keeper, usually, since he would probably be out cold.  Often cuts and stitches too.  On average I could rely on the smelling salts treatment from an incident like that every other month....maybe four or five times a season.  My team-mates found it bloody hilarious (and so did the team-mates of every other 'keeper so nobbled). 

Maybe it was exceptional, but I have a very serious issue with Chelsea's Petr Cech still wearing his helmet about 5 years after Reading put him in hospital with (admittedly) a fractured skull.  As Bert Trauttmann (the famous German 'keeper who broke his neck playing in the FA Cup Final in 1956, but played on and collected his winners medal) said in recent interview, Cech should really get over it, he's not the same 'keeper he was and never will be until he really gets some confidence back....   I tend to agree with old Bert.  But then maybe being paid a million a year by the helmet manufacturer for wearing their product has something to do with it (as recounted to me by a Chelsea supporting mate with connections to the club beyond buying a ticket).

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I'm beginning to sound like a Grumpy Old Man, I know... but I really do believe that back then goalkeepers really were better. 

For a start, we caught the ball.  Anything in the six yard box was the 'keepers, and you would get bollocked severely if you didn't claim the ball, even under challenge...a punch was acceptable, but a catch preferred.  And if you stayed rooted to the goal-line, as is more often than not the case nowadays - well, expect a physical assault from your team mates and/or manager in the dressing room.  So we came, and we usually caught cleanly, and took the knocks, because that's what goalies do.....  Of course, some were better than others.  Sprake was a bit of a flapper but at least he came.  Shilton and Clemence tended to be a bit more continental and punch more, but not to the extent even the best do nowadays (that's when they come at all), but big Pat Jennings was the master.  He had these huge hands, and could catch a ball quite comfortably in one of them.  I remember a picture of him making a catch....I can't remember who it was against, but the forward is airborne, about to head the ball, his marker is on his way to ground where the forward has gone over the top of him, and there's Big Pat, both feet off the ground, his right arm stright out in front of him, with the ball held fast in one huge hand, literally snatching it off the forward's head.  Like picking apples.  An iconic image, and why he was my hero when I was at school and learning the game.

It wasn't only crosses, though.  Shots too were expected to be held, even if you were diving at full stretch.  Turn a shot aside and you'd get yelled at....."catch the fuckin' thing!" was pretty common.  The fact that you've just hurled yourself seven feet off the ground and way across to one side, and done well to get near the ball is irrelevant....the catch should have been made.  And more often than not, it was.   Nowadays, everything is parried, unless it's coming straight into your midriff, and even then not always.  A good save today is showing strong wrists and pushing a routine shot away from goal and any forwards who may be following it in.....in my day it was showing soft hands and holding onto that same routine shot.  Maybe it's those shovel gloves everyone wears now, perhaps soft hands aren't possible anymore......

And distribution.  When I first started, you could walk around the penalty area for minutes on end, provided you released the ball every four steps.....so you just bounced it and carried on.  Great way to slow the game down so you can all take a bit of a breather if you've been under pressure for a while, or wind the clock down when you're a goal up with a minute to go in a cup final or something.  Then you'd usually get to the 18 yard line and welly it as far upfield as possible, aiming of course for a team mate.  In the better teams, players would move into a position allowing you to throw or roll the ball to them (but not too many of those at my local league level).  Then they changed the rules, and said you couldn't hold the ball more than four steps, maximum.....so we'd take a step, and drop the ball and dribble it around the area, with foot control.  That would give us three more steps to eventually pick it up and (yes) welly it as far upfield as possible, aiming of course for a team mate.  You could do that for ages as well.....time wasting was an art form.

But now of course, the ball is lighter.....like one of the crap plastic ones we used to play with at school in the playground.   So a decent keeper can throw the thing as far as we used to kick the old ones - well over the halfway line - much more accurate.  And kick it even further.  But look faintly ridiculous, because another rule change says you can only hang onto the ball for about 5 seconds before having to release it completely (no more pick up), so you get the ludicrous spectacle of a keeper making a save, or picking the ball up or something, then sprinting out to the edge of the area and hurling the ball away as hard and as far as possible.  Or even if no-one is around walking it 10 or 15 yards outside the area, almost to the entre circle in fact, before lumping it as far as possible upfield, aiming of course for a team mate.  At least, that's what most British keepers do - the foreigners, perhaps because they can never seem to throw or kick so far, tend to take their time and look for a teammate close to them (and there always is one) and roll the ball to them, very stylishly a la Ray Wilkins in his pomp.

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I don't think I could enjoy 'keeping the way I used to, if I were playing now.  Despite the bumps and bruises, the cuts and concussions, the busted noses and bent fingers, it was great - I used to love it.  It's another sporting truism (or it was then....now, I'm not so sure) that goalkeepers are different.   Not like other players.  Nuts.  Special somehow.

I don't consider myself in any way special. Maybe a bit nuts, I'll grant you.  And then I think of other keepers, ones who never made the grade in football but went on to do other great things......the philosopher and writer Albert Camus.  Che Guevara.  Pope John Paul II.  Ed "Stewpot" Stewart (remember him?  Useless DJ, but quite useful playing for a Showbiz team I saw once).

And then I think, yes it was a Noble Art, and I'm glad I played when I did.