It’s okay for the weaker counties, but ...
It’s not a straight-forward answer. Should the top teams carry a free-taker who does little else? Definitely not.
To carry such a luxury player would demand that every day he goes out he would score five points from six attempts, six from seven or seven from eight, including a couple of miracle ones from distance.
The problem is some days you may only get three or four scoreable frees, and they may all be tap-overs that anyone would kick. Or what about the day your dedicated free-taker has an off-day? You just can’t justify their existence. Show me a team that has won a recent All-Ireland that wheels out the corner-forward just to kick the frees. For the very top teams, they need all forwards tackling, winning frees, setting up scores and taking scores from general play.
All you want from your free-taker is that he gets the ones he’s expected to convert, that is from inside 35 yards. Anything else is a bonus and everyone is allowed to miss one free. The ideal scenario is to pick your best team irrespective of free-taking — and ensure that team contains two very decent free-takers, one left-footer and one right-footer.
Bernard Brogan and Stephen Cluxton dovetailed very nicely last year and Dublin converted their share. Daniel Goulding is on the Cork team on merit and he just happens to be an excellent free-taker to boot. Donncha O’Connor looks like he has worked hard on his free-taking, which along with an improvement in his general play in the last two years makes him a vital cog for Cork. Colm Cooper, with two very good feet and an excellent temperament, covers most of Kerry’s options. Bryan Sheehan,(inset, below) who in my mind is the finest striker of a dead ball in the country, showed some signs in a couple of League games of making a bigger contribution from play, particularly around the middle of the field. If he maintains that he should start for Kerry. Looking at possible alternatives — and it may be too late now — but surely Tomas Ó Sé would have the natural skill to have become a very good right-footed free-taker and looks like he could strike from distance too, if someone had put some work into him a few years ago. And it goes without saying that he is an automatic on the team.
Most good forwards, with a reasonable amount of skill and, most importantly, a good temperament, can become very good free-takers. I was never a free-taker until one night Brian Stafford turned up at a Meath minor training session and spent an hour with two of us, talking about things like technique, routine and his practice regime. After that it was just a matter of one night’s practice a week on your own from April until your season ended. The following year I improved greatly but it took me three years, and a couple of off-days — my first Leinster final in 1994 comes to mind — before I got comfortable on the real pressure kicks. The point is most players can become free-takers, it’s just the manager needs to identify the right man with a good temperament, reasonable skill level but most importantly one who will put in the practice.
Some exceptions to the rule would be the good Mayo team of the mid-90s who had good defenders — very good midfielders — but were lacking enough natural scoring forwards. Maurice Sheridan certainly justified his existence with a high conversion rate from frees and it brought an otherwise limited team to within a whisker of an All-Ireland. The Kildare team of the late nineties were similarly constructed. One of their main weapons was to run at your defence and draw the foul and Padraig Graven would come out from corner-forward and slot it over. They too got to an Al-Ireland final.
So for these teams, yes, you should carry an obligatory free-taker. Weaker teams too can justify it and can make themselves competitive by setting up defensively, being very fit and nailing their frees. Who can blame a manager in those circumstances desperately looking for any win at all.
In general, ‘carrying’ a free-taker is fine for the weaker teams and those without a class forward but the top teams should not have to carry a free-taker if the coaches/manager are doing their stuff.
On a related note, I often watch Aussie Rules, where the player who wins the ‘mark’ has to take the shot at goals. This means all players have to be very good kickers. If the same situation prevailed in gaelic games and the man or woman fouled had to get up and take the shot at goals, it would mean players had to spend way more time practicing their kicking accuracy in training and, perhaps, less time in the gym. Would that be such a bad thing? I would love to see it being introduced as it would expose the poor kickers in the game.
Is it right that a good athlete who can handpass the ball can become an inter-county footballer?
