IN the opening eight-and-a-half minutes of their win over St Brigid’s on Sunday, Cargin passed the ball back to goalkeeper John McNabb nine times.
After 26 minutes, neither side had scored.
There had been chances.
Cargin could have had three goals.
But the general lifelessness of the game was hard to escape.
Every time there’s a bad game, there’s a rush to judgement that football is doomed.
And when a good game follows, the coaching fraternity emerge from the shadows and start shouting ‘look, the sport’s grand, would you be quiet about rule changes!’
The truth always has permanent residence in the middle.
When football is good, it can be very, very good.
When it’s bad, it can be absolutely horrible.
Of the seven rules the Football Review Committee want to impose, two of them will greatly limit The Artists Formerly Known As Shot-Stoppers’ influence on Gaelic football.
One is to extend the distance a kickout has to travel to the end of the newly-installed scoring arc, which will run in a loop 40m from goal.
The second is to outlaw the goalkeeper taking possession in open play unless he’s beyond his own 65m line.
Both ideas are deeply damaging to the role the goalkeeper now plays.
As a member of the Goalkeeper’s Union for more than 20 years, I do not say this lightly:
These rules absolutely have to be brought in – especially the ban on the backpass.
I had thought the kickout law was maybe a bit much but then I remembered what happened the last one.
A few years ago Congress outlawed passing the ball back to the ‘keeper from a kickout.
It took approximately three weeks for coaches to figure out a workaround where a second man comes around to take the ball and he gives it to the ‘keeper instead.
It took me about five minutes this time.
So if the kickout doesn’t have to travel beyond the arc, just run the same move, only the second man drops back inside his own large rectangle to receive the pass.
That way it’s legal to then give it to the goalkeeper, and you have your 3v2 back again.
Coaching is the most cynical of arts.
Did Cargin or St Brigid’s do anything wrong on Sunday?
Cargin were playing against a strong wind against a team that would have had visions of bringing hellfire and creating turnovers and making a frenzy of a game, having beaten the championship holders in a league final and feeling ready for a breakthrough – why would they have walked into that trap when they didn’t need to?
So St Brigid’s management took the criticism instead, for not pressing up.
Yet they led by 0-5 to 0-1 early in the second half and at that point, Cargin’s stewardship of the trophy was teetering.
It felt like one more score, maybe two, and they’d have earned the right to sit back in and use the youth in their legs to pick the game off.
In the end St Brigid’s lost but it all turned on one free they weren’t given.
Seconds later, Paul McCann had it in him to ignore his groin cramping and finish out his 120-yard lung-bursting run by coolly slotting home the decisive goal.
Cargin have lost one knockout game in Antrim since 2017. Teams have tried everything.
In 2018, they beat Creggan 0-5 to 0-4 in the final.
Two years later, the same two teams were finally prised apart at the very end of extra-time in a 1-20 to 1-18 classic.
Whichever way teams have tried to play them, they’ve matched it and found a way to be better at it.
That’s the challenge Portglenone face in two weeks’ time.
This column has defended to the hilt the right of coaches to do whatever they have to to win.
But it will also defend the right of others to protect the sport as a spectacle.
Because no matter what way you cut it up, a game that’s 0-0 after 26 minutes is a game that will put people off watching Gaelic football.
St Brigid’s didn’t push up because everyone in Antrim knows John McNabb can handle himself in possession.
Not only that, he can cut you open with his left foot. You’ll think you have him cornered and he’ll pick out a 50-yard kick pass into Pat Shivers’ path, exactly as he did with his ninth possession on Sunday.
With the goalkeeper there, it is always 7v6 when the defending team presses up.
That is precisely why teams don’t press up until they’re desperate.
We can lambast coaches for teams not pressing up but players understand why they’re not doing it most of the time.
There is a lot of risk involved and very little reward.
Football’s single biggest issue is that keeping possession is too easy.
It is very difficult to ever be fully man-for-man because the goalkeeper is always there as an out-ball.
It’s very clear that the committee of men headed by Jim Gavin have put a huge amount of very detailed and constructive thought into these proposed changes.
The fact that goalkeepers can still take the ball outside their own 65′ is crucial.
It is a straitjacket of sorts.
Within it, there remains licence to be adventurous and have your reward.
Bringing the rule right through on banning the ball going back to the ‘keeper is absolutely imperative to improving football.
Goalkeepers won’t like it.
I don’t imagine I will enjoy it much myself.
Three weeks ago in this newspaper, Niall Morgan said he was “baffled” by the proposed new rules.
Niall is absolutely the best in the business.
There is nobody else that has brought the high-end combination of both the outfield and goalkeeping skillsets to the position that he has.
But we must ignore Niall this time, because he is deeply biased.
Martyrdom may not be in his interests but it’s what is left now.
History is full of people that sacrificed themselves at the altar of something bigger.
Stay strong, fellow goalies.
To paraphrase The Dark Knight’s final scene, we are just the heroes football needs right now.
