Back in 2016, for one of those quick-fire ‘tell us your favourite’ pop-quiz questionnaires, Rory Beggan name-checked Stephen Cluxton as his sporting hero.
Two years later Beggan pipped Cluxton to an All Star. Cluxton was Footballer of the Year in 2019 and the following season the Dublin goalkeeper won his eighth All-Ireland. Then he was gone. Dessie Farrell described it as a kind of non-retirement retirement, but nobody expected to see him again. Yet here we are.
If Cluxton is lauded as a trailblazer who evolved the role of the goalkeeper in Gaelic football, Beggan is one of the lead disciples who built on his pioneering work. For goalkeeping in the GAA, these have been the reimagining years. What was once the last position filled in schoolyard kickabouts is viewed now as a venerable hybrid shot-stopping quarterback. It has been quite the leap.
The 2021 Ulster final between Monaghan and Tyrone felt like a watershed, an afternoon when Beggan and Niall Morgan operated mostly as out-and-out disruptive playmakers. The daredevil nature of it all was peek-through-your-fingers captivating, though for the players involved it wasn’t wild abandon, but more a rational tactical strategy.
During this era, Graham Brody also became a sweeper keeper with Laois, and in more recent seasons Ethan Rafferty (Armagh) and Odhran Lynch (Derry) have added further to the job requirements. Gaelic football’s number one between the sticks is now also a plus-one out in the field.
Cluxton’s creative concept of hitting the wings with his restarts was once revolutionary. Now it seems quaint.
Beggan, 31, made his Monaghan senior debut in 2013 and has faced Dublin 10 times in competitive matches – losing six, winning three and there was one draw.
Eight of those 10 games were in the league – Dublin won the two championship meetings, in 2014 and 2017. Cluxton did not play in any of the games Dublin lost to Monaghan, or indeed the drawn match in 2020.
He has not conceded a single goal since returning as Dublin’s first-choice goalkeeper. The last time Cluxton had to pick the ball out of his net was in the drawn 2019 All-Ireland final against Kerry, that’s 12 consecutive clean sheets and counting.
[ Monaghan hoping not to be dragged out of their leagueOpens in new window ]
Monaghan have had a trickier route to Saturday’s All-Ireland semi-final but Beggan has kept majors at bay in their last three outings, and four of the last five. And while Conor McManus was justifiably hailed as the hero against Armagh, Beggan saved two penalties in the shoot-out to earn Monaghan a place in only their third semi-final in 35 years.
It was Steve Williams, the former Monaghan goalkeeping coach, who first noticed Beggan’s potential. Williams had worked with Louth’s goalkeepers under Eamonn McEneaney and when the latter was appointed Monaghan manager ahead of the 2011 season, he took Williams with him.
The Monaghan seniors were struggling to find an understudy for goalkeeper Mark Keogh at the time. One evening, Williams scanned around the county’s Centre of Excellence at Cloghan where the minors and under-21s were also training. A few pitches over, he spotted something.
“There was a player putting the ball down and just hitting missiles,” recalls Williams. “He didn’t know where the ball was going but he could kick it a mile. I asked who it was.” Beggan’s goalkeeping journey was about to change.
Williams, a Welshman who enjoyed a professional soccer career with various clubs including Coventry, Cardiff, Shelbourne and Dundalk, reckoned Beggan had the raw materials.
“I was given a free role with him,” recalls Williams, who worked with Stephen Kenny’s Ireland goalkeepers during Covid. “When you looked at kick-outs in Gaelic football back then, I couldn’t understand why so many were still going long.
“I said, ‘right, let’s do what we do in soccer, let’s kick the ball low left or low right, if they come up then you go over, if they go left, you go right.’ Have so many kick-outs that nobody can read you. I was able to use Rory’s weaponry and develop him.”
Crucially, Beggan was willing to work and learn.
“It was blood, sweat and tears for two years,” says Williams, who was with Mickey Harte’s Louth for most of this season and remains the goalkeeping coach with Derry champions Glen. “With Rory, we would be out before training and staying on afterwards.
“We were probably doing 2½hour sessions, all the time working on the technique, the technique, the technique.
“I keep saying to goalkeepers, you are the Tom Brady of the Gaelic football world, you have the playbooks, you know the kick-outs, if something doesn’t work you have a Plan A, Plan B, Plan C.”
Williams remembers a challenge match between Monaghan and Dublin in Parnell Park circa 2017. During games he liked to stand behind Beggan’s goal, but for the second half of that encounter he wandered to the far end.
“I said to Rory, ‘I’m going to watch Cluxton.’ I was dizzy with the Dublin movement in the back six, it was ridiculous.
“But even that has developed since because nowadays teams are so fit that they can nearly go with a high press for most of the game and even Stephen struggled a wee bit with some of his kick-outs against Mayo because of that two weeks ago.”
Beggan’s selection as the All-Star goalkeeper ahead of Cluxton in 2018 caused quite a stir, but his performances for Monaghan that season were exceptional – from shot-stopping and kick-outs to the 0-18 he posted at the other end.
“I got hammered by a lot of people because they felt Stephen deserved to win it, but for me that year Rory deserved it 100 per cent,” says Williams, who has also coached Beggan at Scotstown.
“When I worked with him in those first two years, his mental strength was massive, he worked until I couldn’t work him any longer, he kept turning up.”
Two of the Gaelic football’s greatest goalkeepers will frame the Croke Park pitch on Saturday evening. They have both, in their own way, redefined the game.
[ Situation not critical on Hill 16, says Croke Park director in wake of scufflesOpens in new window ]
The last time Beggan and Cluxton met in competitive action was in the 2017 All-Ireland quarter-final.
“They both played well in that match and I remember watching Rory and Stephen afterwards, you could see the bond,” says Williams.
“There was mutual respect there. Rory admires Stephen, but I’d imagine Stephen admires Rory too.”
