There is something about the predicament of the 'keeper which can drive a man over the bar, writes Declan Lynch

IT IS 25 years or more since Athlone Town played Finn Harps in the FAI Cup semi-final in Oriel Park. But those of us who were there , especially those of us who were supporting Athlone, saw things that day which put the antics of the crazed Fabien Barthez into some sort of perspective.

We saw things that day that no-one should see.

We saw the colourful Athlone goalkeeper Mick O'Brien swinging from the crossbar and breaking it. Twice.

And some of us can still hear the public address announcement: is there a carpenter in the ground ?

RTE had some sort of a black-and-white camera at the match, and soon these harrowing images were being screened on English television. They were all laughing at us.

"Wot a plonkah!," they chortled.

And yet it was all quite unjust. Athlone lost five-nil that day, and they were lucky to get nil. But O'Brien, an agile and charismatic 'keeper and perhaps the fittest man in Ireland, was hardly the chief culprit.

At times on that terrible day he seemed like the only Athlone player on the park who was in any way troubled by the general awfulness of the display. He cared. And perhaps in the end, he cared too much.

Because when it all started to unravel, and he found himself up there, where he could hear the strange music, he clearly forgot that the crossbars at Oriel Park were made of wood, and not the metal of St Mel's Park, Athlone from which he had been swinging to his heart's content for years.

The first breakage took about 15 minutes to fix. When the teams came out again, Harps scored twice to make it four-nil, at which point O'Brien was seen to climb the netting and to throw himself bodily onto the bar, collapsing the goal for a second time.

"He is very dedicated and a bit headstrong," his manager explained. Sent off and pilloried by the Dublin Four media, the player himself added :"I was trying to fix it, when it came crashing down on top of me. The corner of the post seemed a bit loose so I jumped up to try and mend it. When I touched it the post came away in my hand."

He also explained that it was his habit to swing from the crossbar to make sure the ball went over, and to keep the crowd happy by doing somersaults in the goalmouth. "There's a third reason," he added darkly. "I think I might be over-fit."

Fabien Barthez may have "sold the jerseys", but in global goalkeeping terms, his recent displays are by no means unique. There is something about the existential predicament of the 'keeper, those long periods of boredom interspersed with moments of terror, which can drive a man up there, where he can hear the strange music.

I recall how my friend, the comedy writer Arthur Mathews, 'keeper for the successful Hot Press Munchengladbach team, would complain bitterly just before kick-off about the stress of competitive sport, the intensity of it, the sheer unpleasantness which was about to ensue.

He was always seeing the big picture. Often the goalkeeper is a more complex individual than the outfield players. The idea of being both an observer and a participant seems to attract artists and intellectuals such as Patrick Kavanagh and Albert Camus. I have even seen John Rocha keeping goal in Herbert Park.

It is said that Kavanagh once took advantage of a pitch invasion to leave the arena and get himself an ice-cream. The legend says he returned to find the opposing team scoring into an empty net. And unlike Fabien Barthez, Kavanagh, up there in Monaghan, could hardly console himself with his yacht and his millions, the love of a grateful French nation, and the company of supermodel LindaEvangelista.

He had nothing but poems. Oh, how deep his gloom must have been.

Yet their team-mates and supporters look to these men for stability. More than cat-like agility, or even genius, the 'keeper ideally exudes this air of solidity. Above all we demand that they be dependable, even if we know that like the former Wolves 'keeper John Burridge, they are given to watching Match Of The Day in full kit and gloves.

In Latin America, where every second 'keeper seems to be dubbed El Loco, they have perhaps given up the illusion that they will ever get any sense out of such men. Still in this part of the world we persevere, with a character like Peter Schmeichel perhaps embodying that perfect mixture of earth, wind and fire, of rock-like reliability and bad craziness.

Perhaps it is this which so maddens Alex Ferguson, the fact that he had it all in the formidable Dane, and amid the excitement, he let him go to Portugal.

Now he has Barthez, brilliant but with a large hole somewhere deep inside his psyche, liable to open up at any time, any place, with consequences too terrible to contemplate.

Just another 'keeper.