Here Comes The Hot Stoppers...

Friday night saw the completion of the first series of games in the 2013 Airtricity Premier Division, and with one third of the season gone it is probably a good time to take stock.

Derry City are top of the league, unbeaten in ten games. Sligo Rovers are second place (only by virtue of goal difference), though many thought they would be runaway winners after their blistering start.

As far as the goalscoring charts go, Anthony Elding leads the way with 10 goals – though he’s unlikely to add to that anytime soon having been sent off in Tallaght on Friday night. Rory Patterson is hot on his heels with eight goals as the Derry City striker’s blistering form saw him score again on Friday to send his side top on goal difference.

But what about the un-sung heroes between the sticks? Only a lunatic would be a goalkeeper right? Perhaps, but even so surely these mad men deserve some of the plaudits too?!

Here at Extratime.ie we think so and (amidst the backdrop of a horrible 90s pop based homage to Ini Kamoze) we want to shine the spotlight on the last line of defence for each club by looking back at the opening round of fixtures and bring you a look at who is “Top of the Shotstop’s”.

When judging a goalkeepers performance, there is a lot to consider, we will start with clean sheets.

Clean Sheets

So far this season, Sligo Rovers’ ever present goalkeeper Gary Rogers has kept six clean in the eleven games he has played. Gerard Doherty (Derry City), Barry Murphy (Shamrock Rovers) and Brendan Clarke (St Pats) all have five clean sheets while Peter Cherrie has four.

Interestingly though, Brendan Clarke has only played eight times versus Rogers’ eleven appearances, and if you were to consider clean sheets on a club by club basis – St Patrick’s Athletic come out on top with eight clean sheets in their eleven games. For the three games that Brendan Clarke did not play, former Limerick goalkeeper Dave Ryan stepped up to the plate and kept two clean sheets of his own to give Liam Buckley something to think about.

At the other end of the scale, look away now if you are a Cork City or a Drogheda United fan.

Gabriel Sava has played all eleven of his side’s matches so far this season, and despite his side sitting in fifth place the Italian has yet to keep a clean sheet. Down on Leeside, Cork City’s Mark McNulty (also eleven games) hasn’t fared much better and has only mustered a solitary clean sheet – that coming on the opening game of the season away to Limerick.

Goals Conceded

After clean sheets, the next obvious yard stick is the number of goals conceded. Different goalkeepers have had varying amounts of game time so to allow fair comparison; we will look at the number of minutes played per goal conceded.

As mentioned in the first section, St Patrick’s Athletic have the most clean sheets so it is perhaps no surprise that the leader here is from the Inchicore outfit. Despite only featuring three times in the league this season, Dave Ryan tops the charts here having conceded only one goal in his three games – giving him a goal conceded every 270 minutes.

In second place is Gerard Doherty of Derry City, having conceded a goal only every 165 minutes (i.e. conceded six in eleven games) while in third place is Gary Rogers, having conceded a goal only every 141.4 minutes (i.e. conceded seven in eleven games).

At the other end of the table is UCD’s Ger Barron who has conceded a goal every 27 minutes in his three games this season. This is no doubt skewed by the six he let in against Derry City as he has only conceded four in his other two games. Darren Quigley of Bray Wanderers has played nine and a half games and has conceded a goal every 31.7 minutes to give him the unwelcome accolade of having conceded the most goals out of everyone with 27.

Penalties

Clean sheets and conceding as seldom as possible are obvious markers, but what happens when a goalkeeper is faced with a shot at point blank range from the penalty spot?

Interestingly, having kept only one clean sheet in 11 games between them, it is Cork City’s Mark McNulty who is the best goalkeeper when it comes to penalties. So far this season Cork City have given away five penalties, but the man from Ballincollig has saved three of these (against Rory Patterson of Derry City, David McMillan of UCD and Christy Fagan of St Pats - though against Derry, Rory Patterson reacted quickest and scored the rebound).

No other keeper in the league has saved more than one penalty this term with Gabriel Sava (one from two) having the second best success rate.

A full list of the above for each goalkeeper can be found at the bottom of this page.

You could argue that a defence has a part to play in clean sheets whereas penalties are entirely up to a goalkeeper? Or you could argue that you need a top goalkeeper to be challenging for the title which we can see with Gary Rogers and Gerard Doherty’s performance so far.

Either way, there have been some fine goalkeeping displaying in the Premier Division this season

Goalkeepers countrywide…we salute you!