Whatever happened to… The Stanchion?

Let it never be said that GhostGoal is afraid of tackling the really big issues in football today. Here’s Oli Baker …

English football is almost unrecognisable from 20 years ago. All these changes have been very well documented and argued ad nauseum. One development has been criminally overlooked. Where on earth have all the stanchions gone? In years gone by, the sign of a truly great finish was when the ball hit the stanchion, or even better, got stuck in the stanchion. Witness the below goal from Trevor Brooking. Sure it would have a been a good goal regardless of the type of goalpost, but the fact it got stuck in the stanchion elevates it to something far more memorable. The sight of the Hungarian goalkeeper having to thump the ball to release it is a wonderful image.

Hitting the stanchion was a pretty rare event, which made it all the more enjoyable. Not often then, that it happens twice in the same game, a game I happened to attend. Well worth watching the below for one of the greatest team displays of finishing ever seen. You know when Iain Dowie scores an acrobatic volley against you, it is not going to be your day. 

It’s not just the demise of stanchions that is upsetting. It’s the lack of any idiosyncrasies in goal posts and nets at all in modern football. There seems to have been an epiphany about 15 years ago that every team must have identical nets. The continental style box nets have become the norm. Good as they are, it’s all a bit dull.  In the 90s it seemed everyone’s were different. Liverpool had red nets, Norwich had yellow nets, it all made perfect sense. My favourites growing up were definitely at Ipswich. They were blue nets, obviously, and were half held up by what resembled discarded corner flags. They looked like something the groundsman had knocked up in his shed, and I loved them.

There are a few signs of some individuality creeping back. Everton’s nets have been blue for a while. A few clubs, such as Blackpool and Sunderland pay lip service to the problem with a few colourful stripes in the nets, but this doesn’t go nearly far enough. As football kits are becoming more and more retro, it’s time to bring back the stanchion. Only then will we know for sure that a shot really was right in the top corner.