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Brendan Crossan: Football's daft as Liam Boyce comes to Hearts' rescue

Liam Boyce was one of the best players ever to play for Cliftonville
Liam Boyce was one of the best players ever to play for Cliftonville Liam Boyce was one of the best players ever to play for Cliftonville

IT seems a long time ago now since I stood behind the goal at Solitude to have a worm’s eye view of Georgie McMullan’s title-winning penalty against Linfield in April 2013.

The old north Belfast ground was a special place to be back then.

In those title-winning seasons of 2013 and 2014, Cliftonville fans were spoiled rotten.

Every week was a joy. Tommy Breslin, the alchemist, had the elements that all great sides have.

Marc Smyth was the Kaiser who glided through those great years.

Not many players could run a game from right back. But Georgie could.

And if you could mould a player from scratch, you wouldn’t have to look beyond Georgie McMullan’s gene pool.

He’d a warrior’s heart and a football IQ that was off the charts.

I always felt Jaimie McGovern’s contribution to those great Cliftonville sides was slightly undervalued.

He was terrier-like and a fine reader of the game.

They used to say Ryan Catney and Barry Johnston couldn’t play together. Remember that theory?

They’d win the ball back off the opposition and play it simple. They'd repeat the process over and over.

By the final whistle, their opponents were usually demoralised.

Stevie Garrett, the Scannells, Marty Donnelly.

Up front, it was always magic time. Joe Gormley and Liam Boyce.

Boycie was the Piano Man, who’d feet like Astaire.

And the touch. The vision. Just the sheer audacity. He’d do something in a game every week that you’d remember. But you just knew – everyone knew – Boyce would migrate to full-time football sooner rather than later.

He was too good not to make it across the water. Clearly, he’d the mental toughness to succeed.

After his undistinguished spell with Werder Bremen during his teenage years, people might have felt he would settle for a career in the Irish League.

And given the rising standards in the domestic game there was no harm in that.

But Ross County took a punt on him and they were richly rewarded.

In the 2016/17 season, the west Belfast man finished top scorer in the Scottish Premiership ahead of Celtic trio Scott Sinclair, Moussa Dembele and Stuart Armstrong.

Given the financial disparity, it was arguably Boyce’s greatest feat finishing top of the pile as well as playing an integral role in the Dingwall club’s intriguing rise during the years that he was at the club.

I always felt Celtic should have taken a punt on the former Cliftonville striker especially when he was ripe for a move.

He knew the league inside out and would most certainly have finished top scorer again.

He was made in the Celtic mould too. A clever playmaker who could assist just as well as he could score.

He would have been a leading light at Parkhead.

Call it prejudice, call it snobbery – but because he didn’t have blinding pace and perhaps wasn’t deemed a natural athlete, clubs passed up the opportunity of signing him.

We inhabit an era where athleticism trumps talent.

Football has lost its way in the GPS jungle.

Gaelic football has been infected too.

Last week, Cavan’s retiring Cian Mackey couldn’t have summed it up any better.

“I think a big problem in the GAA is they go by GPS stats,” he said.

“Player ‘X’ is just after running 10k; you could be doing 10k running around and doing nothing. GPS is a small key, but you’d have management teams looking into that and thinking it’s the gospel.

“I believe in systems to an extent but I also believe you need someone who can play to a system and can also realise when we need to change something to get a score.”

He added: “It seemed to be more about conditioning and ice baths than someone’s ability to kick pass the ball or look up and find a player. If you don’t give the ball away, you’ll be fine.”

A couple of generations ago, players like Liam Boyce were the centrepiece of teams, the creative hub, the clever metronome. Now, they’re viewed with suspicion.

Can they clock up the miles?

That’s why a lot of football games are poor spectacles. Imagination is curtailed as teams play the percentages and hope to win games 1-0 through a set-piece.

You look at the strengths of Boyce’s game and you end up having coaches trying to take away his best assets.

“In Ireland,” Boyce said, “I loved dropping off and getting the ball and passing. In League One, you kind of just had to occupy the two centre backs and stay as far up the pitch as possible and hold it up as much as you can.

“You would try and get it wide and get in the box. Obviously I still wanted to try and make goals as well but it was more about holding the ball up, and if you didn’t do that, you’d hear about it.”

Even more worrying is how recouping some money is more important than retaining your best player. Boyce has been playing for League One club Burton Albion for the last couple of seasons.

He was their record signing - £500,000 in 2017 - before he suffered a bad knee injury that shaved off seven months of his first season.

He's scored 14 goals this season and is in the best form of his career.

He has been easily Nigel Clough’s best player.

Burton Albion are four points off the play-off berths.

So what do they do?

They accept £150,000 from Hearts rather than take the chance of allowing him to leave on a free at the end of the season. But everything’s compromised. By selling their prize asset they weaken their chances of reaching the play-offs.

Sometimes you wonder about the actual point of professional football and all the competing agendas, where the manager is reduced to being an accountant as the play-offs slip from his fingers.

At board level and on the pitch itself nothing really makes any sense.

You've got to be mentally tough to make a living out of the game. Clearly, Boyce is tough as old boots.

So this is how it will play out in 2020: Burton Albion will finish mid-table, Hearts will climb out of the relegation zone - and Hearts fans will fall in love with The Boyce.