Roche puts ladies first

One David Hickey, with an address in Wales, was moved to put pen to paper after watching the recent England-Germany women’s international on television.

“Why was it screened?” he asked in his letter to a newspaper. “Women can’t play football. They don’t even know the basic rules.”

And then, warming to his theme, he went on: “When tackled they get up and play on. They don’t pretend to be hurt. They don’t dive. They don’t get opponents sent off. They don’t wrestle at corner kicks. Worst of all, they don’t hassle the match officials. As any fool who has watched the men’s Premiership knows, that is not the way to play football.”

Mr Hickey’s letter quickly went viral, picking up a host of compliments as it wended its way through the Twittersphere.

Rightly so too – his was a particularly neat and pithy overturning of a familiar if, thankfully, fading prejudice.

But, at the same time, it would have been nice if he’d found time to accentuate some of the other positives about the game he’d witnessed, such as the quality of some of the football played, albeit mainly by the German team, which showed its overall class and superior finishing by cruising to a 3-0 win.

And that’s the point. For the women’s game to continue to enhance its growing credibility, it deserves that due attention be paid not so much to where it differs from the men’s game but where it matches and even, on occasion, surpasses it in terms of the skill on show. With all due respect to Mr Hickey, lauding female footballers as angels in contrast to the perceived devils of the men’s game flirts with replacing one stereotype with another. It’s not really progress if the dismal cliche of ‘the fairer sex’ simply gives way to the ‘fair play sex’.

Which is where Stephanie Roche’s wonder goal comes in. By now, there can surely be very few people in the country unaware that the former Peamount United player has reached the giddy heights of the final three in the world in the race to win FIFA’s goal of the year gong, her spectacular strike in a league game against Wexford Youths pitting her against World Cup goals by household names Robin van Persie and James Rodriguez for the award named after the Hungarian maestro Ferenc Puskas.

Again, the initial temptation here is to emphasise the many striking contrasts involved. Amateur versus professional. Women versus men. Grassroots versus as elite as the sport can get. A match played on a windswept pitch in front of 85 people versus games played in front of full houses at the World Cup finals in Brazil. And a single, slightly shaky camera v the full artillery of multiple angles, action replay, excited commentary, instant analysis and all the other bells and whistles associated with coverage of the greatest show on earth for a global television audience.

But strip all of that away and you’re still left with a straight head to head between Roche, van Persie and Rodriguez that can only be properly judged by a cool, forensic, unemotional appraisal of the respective merits of their goals. And by that standard – the only one that should ultimately count – Stephanie Roche deserves to win.

Robin van Persie’s headed goal against Spain has the considerable virtue of being quite unlike any other ever scored, a kind of ‘Fobsbury Flop’ effort which combined quick-thinking, improvisation and athleticism to take full advantage of the fact that Spanish ’keeper Iker Casillas had come a couple of yards off his line.

James Rodriguez’ effort against Uruguay was a more orthodox thing of beauty. I was fortunate to be in the Maracana that day and, as he controlled the ball on his chest before lashing an unstoppable volley in off the underside of the bar, the open-mouthed reaction of everyone around me in the press box and in the stands was enough to confirm, without the luxury of slow-mo, that we’d all just witnessed something very special.

But, I would contend, Stephanie Roche’s goal surpasses both, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the ball into her from the right is hardly ideal, being a couple of feet off the ground. Nevertheless, her first touch with her right foot, simultaneously taking the sting out of the pass and lifting the ball up to set up the next stage of the move, is perfect.

Secondly, unlike van Persie, whose run had taken him in behind the back four, and Rodriguez, who was afforded too much time and space when he received a headed pass, Roche was being closely marked at the edge of the area as, with her second touch, she flicked the ball over her opponent before swivelling on the spot to deliver the coup de grace, a breathtakingly full-blooded left-foot volley that fairly screamed into the top corner.

Irish football has been blessed with a few special goals this year, from Aiden McGeady’s sleight of foot and sublime finish for Ireland in Tbilisi to Chris Forrester’s long-range looping volley for Pat’s against Drogheda and, of course, Colin Healy’s spectacular overhead kick against Pat’s at Turner’s Cross.

Like the van Persie and Rodriguez goals, they all share that ‘wow’ factor which is the main reason most of us fell in love with the beautiful game in the first place.

But for sheer skill, for the technical difficulty involved, for the invention, imagination and improvisation she brought to bear on her goal, Stephanie Roche deserves to be named the winner in Zurich on January 12.

That she’s the first woman to reach this lofty stage is a welcome bonus. So too the fact that she’s one of our own. But this competition is all about the nature of the goal, not the gender or nationality of the goalscorer. And it’s for that reason, and that reason alone, you should go on the FIFA website and give Stephanie Roche your vote.