In Sevens football, your goalkeeper is usually your best player.
They have the space, they have no-one marking them and they have the ability to scale the pitch and cause serious damage.
Used correctly, the Sevens goalkeeper is the one player who can cause an imbalance in play every single time because they can either exploit the space or draw the tackle and free up someone else in the process.
More and more though, we’re starting to see goalkeepers in 15-a-side adopting the same approach.
Just last week, the Monaghan minor stopper ran the length of Celtic Park, giving and going the whole way, and he curled over a beauty against Derry in extra time of the Ulster championship.
Did I just witness a goalie kick a point from play!!? What a time to be alive 😅 @GAA_BEO pic.twitter.com/Zhim1w6Ryp
— Rory's Stories (@RorysStories) April 23, 2018
And Monaghan’s superstar senior goalie Rory Beggan already did it last year in a club game when he strolled up the pitch for Scotstown and kicked a point.
Long gone are the days when your number one jersey is handed to the reluctant bystander or the big guy who wouldn’t get in the team if he didn’t stand in goals. Gone too is the idea that your biggest kicker should be planted in there to boom the ball aimlessly downfield.
Goalkeepers are proper footballers now and it makes perfect sense to use them. Used correctly, there’s no way you shouldn’t get out of defence anymore and launch an attack. Going even further than that, there’s no reason why you can’t affect the scoreboard with the ‘keeper.
In Derry’s Division One football league on Sunday, Magherafelt saw off Greenlough with a mightily impressive 5-16 to 1-7 thumping but it was Odhran Lynch’s performance which will be remembered most.
Odhran Lynch runs from goals from one end of the pitch to the other, offload to Antone and goal !!!!
— RossaGaelsDerry (@RossaGaelsDerry) April 29, 2018
The O’Donovan Rossa ‘keeper went from one box to the other to tee up a goal and yet again show the country the consternation that a fly goalie can cause in football.
Lynch breaks from his own nets and, granted he’s comfortable on the ball which he obviously is, he is a free man the whole way around the pitch.
He can be used to get off the shoulder, he can draw a tackle and he score himself. These guys are changing the game as we know it before our very eyes.
