There are many ways to score a goal in Gaelic football. But in our mind’s eye, there’s really only one. If I were to boil it down to its first principles, the ideal goal in Gaelic football is basically what Joe Kavanagh did for Cork against Derry in the first half of the 1993 All-Ireland football final.
For those of you under 40: he took a ball on the burst about 50 yards out, took a hop, a solo, then another hop and, as the Derry goalkeeper marched out from goal, blasted the ball high and past him and nearly burst a hole in the net. It is so aesthetically pleasing. It’s the All-Ireland final goal we all dreamed of scoring in our backyards as children.
On first viewing it looks like it flew into the top corner, but the angle behind the goal suggests that it was actually the pace of the ball that beat Damien McCusker. It ended up crossing the goal line not too far from the precise middle of the goal. And this leads us to an uneasy truth about goalscoring in Gaelic football. As a playing and watching population, we are obsessed with the thunder-bastard – get in close to goal, and whack the thing as hard as you can in the general direction of the umpires.
There is no such thing as hitting the ball too hard. If you blazed your last chance over the bar from 10 yards, leaning back at an absurd angle from the ball as you kicked it, maybe you could try hitting the next one ... even ... harder?
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Peter Canavan’s goal for Tyrone against Kerry in the 2005 All-Ireland final was basically cheating us out of one of the simple joys of life. Rolling it along the ground, placing it in the bottom corner of the net, as he did that day, is a form of cheap deception. You’ve worked hard to get into position, you’ve timed your run perfectly, the pass is on the money, everything up until this point has been beautifully composed – now less of your notions Canavan, close your eyes and blem the bloody thing.
Watching Down against Monaghan at the weekend was a case in point. The two goals that were scored in the first half were so adroitly finished that it brought home to me how rarely you actually see it.
John McGeough’s goal for Down was beautifully created by two quick kick-passes. McGeough was on the half-turn by the time the ball landed in his hands, and he just needed a yard of space to create the goalscoring chance. He bounced it low into the ground, and Rory Beggan was beaten down to his left.
A couple of minutes later, the ball lands into Micheál Bannigan up the other end. He jinks once, then twice, gets it on to his left foot, and his shot is a daisy-cutter that Down goalkeeper Ronan Burns just can’t get down to save. It doesn’t fly past him, it doesn’t nestle in the top corner. The light rain that might have accumulated on the net doesn’t dance, like the sweat from a heavyweight’s brow after a stunning right cross. Neither of those goals were even 10 per cent as aesthetically pleasing as Kavanagh’s in ’93, or countless other similar examples ... but they were goals.
And this is the point. Time after time in that first half, Down raided straight through the middle of Monaghan’s defence, only for the player to get to the 13-metre line and ... blast the ball wildly in the general direction of the goal. They got a few points out of it, but the lack of composure was jarring, considering the quality of the two goals that had already been scored.
Blasting the ball high and over in soccer is a disaster. In a similar situation in Gaelic football, it’s rewarded. You’ll get your point, and every once in a while you’ll hang one in the net in a crowd-pleasing fashion, but it’s not composed. It’s not methodical. Aiming for the crossbar is a cop-out.
Pádraic Joyce watched Galway hit two goals against Armagh, and miss two penalties, but the goal chance I was most interested to hear him talk about was the one missed by the otherwise excellent Matthew Thompson. “He had a goal chance after half-time – I told him he was going to get a goal chance and to keep it on the ground, but ...”. The young Salthill man blasted it at Ethan Rafferty’s head.
This is the thing. It’s not like players and coaches are unaware of what needs to be done. Kevin McStay will have despaired at Jack Carney snatching at two goal chances for Mayo against Donegal, which would have changed the course of that game. Rob Finnerty showed his younger clubmate the way to do it when he finished with his weak foot along the ground past Rafferty for Galway’s second goal.
We bemoaned the lack of goals in the final stages of last year’s championship – only 10 in the last 11 knock-out games of the season. Space is no longer at such a premium, and in a season this wide open the team that is able to take those chances, rather than being satisfied with the point, stands every chance of walking away as champions.
Goals win games. They will also win All-Irelands.
