John Gannon looked set to play a back-pass, saw an opponent making a run to intercept his potential pass (although he wasn’t quite a ‘goalie-blocker’) and so turned his way out of danger before playing a left-footed pass into the channel. Striker Alan Cork raced onto it, was tripped by Gary Pallister, and Deane converted the penalty. There were just seven seconds from Gannon’s turn until the penalty award – without the new law, the ball would still have been in the goalkeeper’s hands at the opposite end.
Compilers of ‘football’s funniest gaffes’ VHS tapes must have been delighted. The most comical error came in early September at Tottenham, and resulted in the dismissal of Sheffield United goalkeeper Simon Tracey. He’d already been booked for handling the ball outside the box, and then, when presented with a back-pass in the second half, panicked. He was closed down quickly by Spurs’ Paul Allen, and proceeded to dribble the ball sideways, taking it directly out of play for a Tottenham throw. When Tracey tried to retrieve the ball from next to the advertising hoardings to prevent Spurs taking the throw, a quick-thinking ball boy snatched it away, chucked it to Spurs sub Andy Gray, which prompted Tracey to rugby-tackle Gray to the floor. He was dismissed. Blades manager Dave Bassett wasn’t impressed. ‘He’s got the brains of a rocking-horse – and I told him so.’
This was not simply an English phenomenon, of course, and there were similar problems across Europe. North of the border, Rangers opened the scoring in October’s Scottish League Cup Final when Aberdeen goalkeeper Theo Snelders bizarrely chested a wayward clearance from a teammate straight into the path of a grateful Stuart McCall. It wasn’t an intentional back-pass anyway, and wouldn’t have been penalised, but Snelders was clearly unaware of the regulations and was left screaming at his defenders, ‘I can’t pick it up!’ The biggest impact came in Italy. Serie A was traditionally Europe’s most defensive division, and following goals-per-game averages of 2.11, 2.24, 2.29 and 2.27 in the four seasons before 1992/93 it suddenly jumped to 2.80, an unprecedented rise. The Premier League didn’t witness such a surge, rising from 2.52 in the final old First Division season to 2.65 in the opening Premier League campaign, but the back-pass law clearly affected the nature of the division, with certain teams particularly struggling.
The most famous victims were Liverpool. Many have linked their inability to win a Premier League title, having dominated the 1970s and 1980s, to the introduction of the back-pass law. In reality they finished sixth in both the final First Division season and the first Premier League season, but Liverpool’s players admit it affected them badly. ‘It was constantly in your mind as a defender – you can’t play the ball back,’ remembered defender Nick Tanner. ‘Previously, Liverpool would just kill the game off. We’d be 1–0 up, play the ball back to Bruce Grobbelaar. He’d bounce the ball a bit, Phil Neal would drop off, and Bruce would roll it out to him. That all stopped.’ Their manager during this period was Souness – the man responsible for the back-pass to end all back-passes.
Arsenal also suffered. They were the bookmakers’ title favourites, having scored the most goals in the top flight during 1991/92, but they struggled to build play from deep and scored the fewest goals during 1992/93, underlining the extent of the back-pass change. However, they adapted well defensively and remained an excellent side in knockout competitions, winning the League Cup and FA Cup – both, coincidentally, with 2–1 victories over Sheffield Wednesday.
But the biggest losers, significantly, were a very direct side – Wilkinson’s Leeds. Having triumphed the previous season, they slipped backwards alarmingly and finished 17th in the Premier League’s inaugural campaign, failing to win away all season. Considering that Wilkinson predicted route one football would prosper under the new regulations, it was ironic that his own players suffered precisely because they could no longer play that way. Goalkeeper John Lukic became the first Premier League goalkeeper to be penalised for handling a back-pass, from centre-back Chris Whyte – whom Wilkinson had rated as the division’s best centre-back in the previous campaign but who struggled considerably with modern football. ‘The back-pass law affected us particularly,’ midfielder Gary Speed later admitted. ‘The centre-backs used to stroke the ball back to the goalkeeper, and John Lukic used to launch it up to me and Lee Chapman. Suddenly we weren’t allowed to play that way anymore.’
Fellow midfielder Steve Hodge agreed. ‘Previously John Lukic would hold the ball and he’d launch it to us high up the pitch,’ he explained. ‘Now, Lukic would have to launch it from the floor and the ball wasn’t going far enough down the pitch. We were much less of a threat because the ball wasn’t landing or being flicked to the edge of our opponents’ area, it was bobbling around in the midfield. Also, teams would now really push up and made Lukic kick it quickly.’ It’s notable how much emphasis was placed upon the simple concept of how far the goalkeeper could kick, indicating the accepted method of distribution at the time.
Nottingham Forest also paid a heavy price for the new regulations, finishing bottom. Legendary manager Brian Clough had other problems by this stage, particularly his alcoholism, which, as he later admitted, clouded his judgement significantly. But his side’s style of football didn’t suit modern football, as Gary Bannister outlined. ‘Where we’ve suffered is when we’ve had the ball, we’ve played it back to Mark Crossley and he has cleared it,’ he said. ‘On most occasions the ball has come straight back at us, putting us under pressure. Mark having to hump the ball up the field has not helped us at all. Last season, a back-pass would have kept us possession and Stuart Pearce, Brian Laws or Gary Charles would have picked the ball up from the keeper to start us off again.’
Pearce, slightly surprisingly for a regular set-piece taker, looked particularly nervous when forced to play out and was responsible for the most famous misplaced back-pass of this era. After eight seconds of a November 1993 World Cup qualifier against minnows San Marino, he underhit the ball towards David Seaman, allowing Davide Gualtieri to give San Marino a shock 1–0 lead over England, who nevertheless won 7–1. That match was also the final England appearance for Pearce’s ex-Forest teammate Des Walker. He’d raced to 59 caps in the space of five years and was described as ‘the outfielder England manager Graham Taylor can least afford to lose’ in the Guardian a year earlier. But Walker discovered his talents no longer suited the modern game, and his England career was over at the age of 27. As Harry Redknapp later said, ‘When they did away with the back-pass in 1992 it made a huge dent in Des’s game. He used his speed to nip in front of the striker, mop up the ball and knock it back for the goalkeeper to pick up … suddenly, he was being required to play his way out of trouble, and that wasn’t his style at all.’
Indeed, one of the notable features of the early Premier League seasons – in line with Wilkinson’s prediction – was the frequent sight of defenders, when chasing long balls back towards their own goal, simply hacking the ball out of play to concede a throw-in. ‘I’ve told the players, “If you’re in doubt, kick it out,”’ said Coventry manager Bobby Gould. ‘“Stop fannying about and put it in Row Z.”’ It’s no coincidence that the first PFA Player of the Year during the Premier League era was Paul McGrath, the Aston Villa centre-back who played the ball comfortably with both feet. No other defender adjusted so impressively to the new law, and the Irishman became the template for the modern centre-back, as managers increasingly required ball-playing defenders rather than old-fashioned cloggers. A player like Rio Ferdinand, for example, would have been a midfielder rather than a centre-back were it not for the back-pass change.
Inevitably, the role of goalkeepers changed enormously. It was the first time that they had been forced to adjust since the 1912 law change that ruled they could handle only inside the penalty box rather than in the entirety of their own half. Goalkeepers, rightly famous for moaning, were outraged. ‘The new rule is making a mockery of my profession,’ complained Alan Hodgkinson, the ex-England shotstopper who became renowned as the country’s first specialist goalkeeping coach. ‘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? You have to remember that keepers have spent 20 years learning
