Football: Keepers answer back-pass: Guy Hodgson records an open verdict on the new law despite the threat of ridicule which now hangs over the exposed last line of defence

THE timing could not have been bettered. As Erik Thorstvedt of Tottenham was listing new problems for goalkeepers on BBC Radio, Tony Coton was giving a demonstration on a greasy, treacherous pitch. His attempt at kicking a moving ball would have been laughable in training; in an FA Cup replay it was deadly serious.

Five times the Manchester City goalkeeper attempted to launch the ball into opposition territory and failed miserably. The best fell well short of the halfway line, the worst landed at the feet of a striker who could hardly fail to score until his surprise at the gift caused him to hesitate.

Football has changed this season. There are new leagues, green shirts for referees and an extra seat on the substitutes' bench, but these changes have been cosmetic. The most fundamental alteration has been to the role of the goalkeeper. The 'back-pass rule', to give it its common name, has transformed the man whose job went virtually unchanged for a century from the moment the laws allowed a player to pick up the ball in a pre-defined area.

The notion that dwindling entertainment at football matches had a root in the goalkeeper holding up play has chipped away at his status quo since the Seventies. First came the four-steps rule and then this season the prohibition of picking up the ball from a back- pass. The character of the job has been reshaped; the goalkeeper can now either be, in an ideal world, the launch point of attacks, or, in the worst cases, a laughing stock.

There is not a keeper in the Premier League this season who has not been reduced to the butt of terrace humour. Manchester United's Peter Schmeichel, voted the finest player in his position in the world last year, looked anything but when Peter Beardsley tackled him and then scored in September. Last month Beardsley's Everton team-mate, Neville Southall, was so busy remembering whether it was a colleague or an opponent who had got the last touch that he caught the ball outside the area and was sent off.

'The new rule is making a mockery of my profession,' said Alan Hodgkinson, the former England goalkeeper who coaches Schmeichel, England's Chris Woods and Scotland's Andy Goram. 'I know people will assume I'm biased but I can't see the value of setting up goalkeepers so they look foolish. There's not one who hasn't been caught out. Is that good for the game?'

Hodgkinson accepts the law was tinkered with for the best of motives but argues that the same result could have been achieved without a wholesale change in role. 'If they had wanted to speed up the game, a simpler solution would have been to impose a time limit on how long a goalkeeper could be in possession of the ball. If they imposed a time limit of, say, five seconds, we would do away with such things as a goalkeeper dribbling the ball round his area.

'He couldn't throw it out to a defender and get it back, so the ball would be in play for longer without the job of the goalkeeper changing fundamentally. You have to remember that goalkeepers have spent 20 years learning to catch the ball. It's second nature to them. It's not easy to adjust.'

The introduction of the rule was also expected to herald the demise of the veteran defender. The consensus was that the game would be too fast, the ball in play too consistently to give the 30-plus generation time to recover from sprints. The enduring career of Kevin Moran, 37, and still putting his head where angels would fear to place a foot for Blackburn in the Premier League, would seem to contradict this theory, as would Viv Anderson's appearances for Sheffield Wednesday.

'The old foxes will always find a way of taking a breather,' said Mick McCarthy, not without cunning himself as the 33-year-old player-manager of Millwall. 'The game is faster, the ball is in play more but the senior players are crafty, they wouldn't have survived so long if they weren't, and they know how to adjust.

'I think it's been a good change. There's more action in the penalty areas and more thrills. It's increased the enjoyment for the spectator. My only misgiving is that I'd like to see back-passes in the area made legal. That's a skill, not a way of wasting time.'

An onus has fallen on officials as well as rearguards. The man in green, black or purple frequently has to hurtle up and down the field as a pass back is booted 60 yards in the opposite direction. That taxes the brain as well as the lungs.

'The referee used to be able to relax a little when the ball went back to the keeper,' Neil Midgley, spokesman for the referees' and linesmen's association said. 'He could position himself near the halfway line and watch out for any pushing and shoving. Now he has to remember who kicked the ball last, whether there was any intent to pass back, and watch for potential problems between the goalkeeper and forward.

'It's an extra dimension, something more to think about. There has been a lot of criticism of referees this season, most of it unjustified, and I don't think the new law has helped. Give anyone something extra to do and the job becomes more difficult - it doesn't matter whether you are working in an office or trying to run a football match. What people forget is that the referees don't make the rules, they just have to apply them.'

The Football Association, too, does not make the rules, but it does have an influential voice on the Fifa committees that do. At Lancaster Gate the view is that the back-pass law has been welcomed. 'There was suspicion at first,' a spokesman said. 'All sorts of mayhem was predicted. After teething problems, I think the consensus is that the game is quicker and the ball in play for longer.

'There was comment about a couple of incidents at the start of the season but things have settled down. I would say referees get it right 99.9 per cent of the time.'

Half a season on, the men between the posts, too, are reducing the errors caused by unfamiliarity while rumbling quietly about the iniquity of it all. Goalkeepers have always been enthusiastic outfield players in five-a-side practices, but until now there had been no need for their ball skills in matches. Defenders spent years at clubs without realising which was the goalkeeper's kicking foot; now a pass to the weaker side might earn a dressing down from the manager.

'Our goalkeepers spend more time working at kicking the moving ball in training,' Ray Clemence, the former England goalkeeper and coach at Tottenham Hotspur, said. 'But on the pitch we've not changed much. We had a talk about it at the start of the season and decided to pass the ball back as we've always done, and trust Erik (Thorstvedt) or Ian (Walker) to deal with it. The only concession we made was that we try to play it back as soon as possible to give the keeper more time.

'Whether the game has improved is debatable. In some matches the ball gets kicked into the stand a lot and I can't see what's better in hanging around waiting for throw-ins when in the past the goalkeeper had the ball in his hand trying to do something creative.

'In theory defenders ought to improve their ball skills - they'll learn to play themselves out of trouble. But that's going to take time before it becomes evident. The jury is still out on whether the new law has been a good thing.'

(Photograph omitted)