Goalkeepers are key to any team these days, and Gordon Banks was important in changing perception of them

FOOTBALL tales come no more wonderful than those of John Burridge, who put the ‘crazy’ into the truism that ‘all goalkeepers are crazy’.

When Budgie made his debut for home town Workington aged 18 in 1969, he’d have been well paid at a tenner a week.

His age, his club’s lowly status and the position he filled would all have something to do with this. Keepers, you see, attracted the same general attitude as, say, trapeze artists.

Gordon Banks was important in changing that impression.

It was the Pele save at the World Cup in Mexico 1970 that accelerated the new perception of goalkeeping.

It is a surprising oversight that knighthoods were not bestowed on Banks, who died a fortnight ago, and his England captain in 1966, Bobby Moore.

Their contributions to the national game were exceptional.

Today, the goalkeeper is properly considered the key position for any successful team.

It took a long time for that importance to be reflected in wages or transfer fees.

But in the current Manchester United negotiation with David De Gea, their worth is being broadcast to the world.

The cats are getting the cream at last.

Budgie was so addicted to football that if in his 30-year, 30-club career he’d been paid in fish and chips he’d have been happy.

I’m positive De Gea is an absolute professional but would he practise by diving off the coal shed on to his garden, as Budgie was known to?

Paid the £400,000-a-week he has reportedly been offered, the Spaniard could afford to jump from his own helicopter.

In Budgie’s heyday, the job of a keeper was as the final obstacle to goal, nothing more.

Little thought was given to the possibility of building movements from the one position where the battlefield is in view.

Until Pep Guardiola popularised constructive use of the ball by keepers, their job was little more than to get rid of the thing and let the proper footballers get on with it.

Guardiola axed Joe Hart from Manchester City’s first team because he demanded that England’s then No 1 used the ball better, a skill much less fraught now pitches are better.

Keepers have unchallenged time to pass and the more accurately they do it, the more passing the ball back to them is not seen as a defensive means.

For them, though, a mistake is written as clearly as ads around the perimeter of the pitch.

We recall how Paul Robinson missed a back pass for England entirely and Villa’s Peter Enckleman stood looking forlorn after a throw-in went past his boot and in.

I don’t know how Budgie would have reacted but he will appreciate the revaluation of his muddy trade.

He’d do anything for a win, once celebrating by sitting on the bar at Selhurst Park — that’s sharing the cat’s cream with the crowd, I think.