'High-risk, high-reward' - Glass and Co. willing to adapt to the modern-day goalkeeper
FLY-GOALIE: Derry goalkeeper Odhran Lynch kicks a point. Pic: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
Exactly four minutes into Derry's demolition of Fermanagh a fortnight ago, goalkeeper Odhran Lynch collected a pass 50 metres from the Fermanagh goals.
With Fermanagh sitting deep and opting to go man for man at the back, nobody was within 25 metres of Lynch who strode all the way forward to the edge of the D and, uncontested, clipped over Derry's third point of the game.
Later in the half, this time under pressure from Josh Largo Ellis, close to the right sideline around the half-way mark, Lynch chipped a pass over the top for Paul Cassidy who slalomed through the rest of the Fermanagh defence for Derry's second goal which put them 2-7 to 0-3 clear. Already the game was up.
Afterwards, Murphy's Moment - a feature of BBC TV's coverage of games where Michael Murphy picks his moment of the day - highlighted how Derry's first three points came from goalkeeper Lynch and two defenders, Eoin McEvoy and Padraig McGrogan.
"It summed up modern-day football," said Murphy, pointing to Derry's apparent ability to score from anywhere.
Murphy was correct, of course, though an alternative take that Fermanagh's naive defending amounted to an invite to Derry to run hard at them from all angles, would have been equally on the money. Rory Gallagher won't expect Monaghan to roll out such a welcome mat in Omagh.
What Murphy also didn't mention was the associated risk with Lynch's licence to wander. Twice Fermanagh almost punished Derry with goals after Lynch had pushed right up to midfield to occupy space and be an extra body for opposition kick-outs. In what looked like a rehearsed move, the Fermanagh kick-out bypassed Lynch altogether on a couple of occasions, one of them ending with a Fermanagh player missing the empty net with a snap shot that went wide, the other a goal attempt that was blocked by a Derry defender.
"Yeah, it's a high-risk, high-reward sort of thing," reasoned All-Star Derry midfielder Conor Glass. "There is that chance that if you do push with a 14 or 13-man press that a ball over the top can cause a goal like that. That is the risk we're willing to take. Thankfully it hasn't really hurt us the last number of games."
The big difference this time around, quite aside from Monaghan's greater tactical savvy, is that Derry will run into a team with a goalkeeper, Rory Beggan, who could claim to have invented the sweeper 'keeper strategy. How he and Lynch approach the game and how they influence it will be easily the most intriguing aspect of the Healy Park encounter.
"Beggan is a sort of a different one in that he probably won't push up as far, or he might," said Glass. "It depends on what Monaghan do collectively as well. They might go long or they might go short so you have to adapt to what the opposition gives you."
What we have at the very least is the possibility of both goalkeepers scoring from play in a Championship game. The same thing will be on the cards for the Ulster final if Armagh make it through given how Ethan Rafferty has been channeling his inner Beggan in recent seasons.
Throw Tyrone goalkeeper Niall Morgan into the mix and you have virtually an entire province obsessed with ball-playing goalkeepers.
"It provides a different challenge in that usually you have 14 players to sort of manage and defend against but now they have the goalkeeper which adds a different sort of dimension to it," said Glass. "So we have to see what works, see what teams have done against Armagh, because they're sort of a template in terms of defending that.
"With Beggan, his goalkeeping ability is top class too, his kick-outs are ridiculous. That was one of the reasons they beat Tyrone because in the second-half Beggan was able to put his kick-outs within a three-yard radius of where he wanted them to land. So he's an exceptional goalkeeper but we're ready to take it on."
Former AFL player Glass said the expansion of a goalkeeper's workload is just one aspect of a game constantly evolving.
"The additional plus one in defence has kind of gone out the window," said the Glen man of a tactic only introduced a decade ago but already out of date. "You've got to have a sort of hybrid system of being able to play a plus one, yes, but also be able to go man-on-man as well. Being able to adapt in play is definitely going to be important to us against Monaghan."
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