Net loss for a game with bigger goals

THE YEAR barely had time to adjust its jockstrap before Fifa confronted us with an example of the power thinking we must resign ourselves to expect in these dynamic sporting times. Fast becoming the Federation of Interfering Football Administrators, the governing fathers of the game worldwide are proposing to increase the size of the goal. They don't want to move the goalposts; just prise them further apart.

Two balls wider, one ball higher is their quaint way of explaining to a wondering planet the suggested enlargement. In our outmoded, and probably unlawful, measurements, this means adding about 18 inches by nine inches to the present dimensions of eight yards by eight feet which have been in place for the past 130 years. Fifa say they don't intend to rush in with this development - 1999 would do - and they would have to get it past the International Board, one of the few organisations in which we still have a little clout. The Board, however, have neglected to stamp on the idea at birth and so it is off and running.

Normally, we could rely on it eventually running off the end of the world as so many of their game- improvement brainwaves have done before. But this particular notion has about it a feeling of determination that we who gave football to the world must watch very closely. It is one thing to allow them to change a few rules, even to tinker with the ornaments, but farting round with the furniture deserves at least a growl from the motherland until we can be convinced it is in the best interests of the sport.

Increasing the size of the goal would be a move consistent with Fifa's attempts in recent years to improve the game's appeal to infidel eyes. Their hopes to do so in time for the 1994 World Cup in the United States not only failed but the Americans were treated to a goalless final between Italy and Brazil that ran for 120 minutes before being settled on penalties.

The number of important fixtures ending in stalemate has been on the increase and is of concern especially because the means of deciding a match thereafter has been the subject of the longest and most controversial debate we have had in recent years. Bigger goals would guarantee more scoring and should mean fewer draws and a distinct lessening of that problem. But how many extra goals per match would result from expanding the target; three, four, five or more?

Too many would disfigure the face of a game that already has most of the world in its thrall. There is a clear risk of devaluing that difficult and intriguing quest to score that is central to football's appeal. The goal has been the rock-solid, unaltered object of the players' efforts since 1865. It was there before the penalty area and the centre-circle and even before the whistle replaced the flag as the means of controlling play.

However, the traditionalist argument would be much stronger if we could produce some compelling reason why the goal was created in that shape, and with those dimensions, in the first place. When football and rugby were evolving in the public schools 150 years ago there was a bewildering variety of goals. Eton favoured a goal 11 feet wide and seven feet tall while Uppingham offered a target only five feet tall but which ran the entire width of the pitch. Eton were always a banker home win.

When the schools and colleges got together in 1863 to standardise a few ground rules they decided on two posts eight yards apart but with no upper limit. This was also adopted when the Football Association was founded later that year. After one spectacular goal which is said to have passed between the posts while 90 feet in the air it was decided to add a tape eight feet from the ground - in Sheffield they made it nine feet but they eventually agreed to conform. The crossbar was made compulsory in 1875 and the goal has remained undisturbed, particularly by England, ever since.

Part of the Fifa argument is that the average size of man has increased considerably in the intervening years and, therefore, larger goalkeepers are guarding an area meant for their smaller predecessors. This is not an argument that would have impressed Billy Foulkes who kept goal for Chelsea at the turn of the century and was a towering 21 stone. Neither would it impress those who realise that these days the ball travels faster and curves more treacherously. Apart from being spared shoulder charges, goalkeeping is no easier now.

Since the subject of bigger players has been raised, would not a more significant effect be on the field of play? Players are not only larger, they are faster and more mobile and can cover a pitch at a rate undreamed of by their forefathers. This is surely a case for enlarging the pitch rather than the goal. This is not practical, of course, but a reduction of a team from 11 to 10 would certainly give the game the opportunity to become more attractive. It might even be a less dangerous and more acceptable way of creating more goals.

HARRY CRIPPS, who died last week at the age of 54, will leave a load of fond memories among those who saw Millwall play in the Sixties and Seventies. He was a full back of the old school; big, tough, affable and contagiously enthusiastic.

He had a penchant for heroic last-minute tackles and mighty clearances and his speciality was the barnstorming run upfield, the almighty thump at the ball to send it screaming high over the bar and the trundle back to his position to rapturous applause from the devoted Den crowd.

Not all his excursions were failures. In 400 games for Millwall between 1961 and 1974 he averaged a goal every 10 games, which wasn't bad for a full-back in those days. The Den was on my patch as a roving football reporter and I rarely baulked at a visit to Millwall because there was never a game of otherwise dubious attraction that Harry's wholeheartedness couldn't enliven.

When I quit that line of work, my colleagues presented me with some mementos. These included a piece of coving from Gillingham FC's wall over which I had to climb after taking so long to compose my report on a goalless draw with Barrow they'd gone home and locked me in. Among the others was Harry Cripps's jockstrap.

Not a priceless garment but it shares pride of place with a shirt signed by Pele and is a reminder that the game does not belong to the fleet or the fancy. The drama of football has a part for everyone. Harry played his to perfection.

WHEN Warrington rugby league club signed two players from Tonga recently they promised them a car. Unfortunately, when they arrived it was discovered that neither of them could drive. Lessons were hurriedly booked and in the meantime the club have supplied them with a bicycle each. There's so much movement around the world of rugby these days that the uprooting of players is nothing unusual. But it is difficult to prevent your heart going out to anyone who has been snatched from a tropical summer in Tonga and finds himself pedalling a bike around Warrington in January.