began his swing but Dowling
smashed it into the other
corner.
Studying penalty takers’
styles and consistency in
striking action can give
goalkeepers a greater idea
enough if you stick it into the
corner.”The reflexes and reactions
of goalkeepers now are
outstanding but in the modern
game, a millisecond is an age.
On average, the striking speed
of penalties is between 140-
150km per hour, which affords
the goalkeepers a reaction time
of around 500 milliseconds.
How fast is that? The blink of a
human eye takes between 200-
400 milliseconds.Forde’s precision bullets
have turned him into a
penalty assassin but TJ Reid’s
unpredictability probably
makes him the most deadly
penalty taker of the modern
game. Reid strikes with
supreme precision and massive
power but he is so hard to read
because of the variety in his
arsenal - high, low, bottom
or top left, and right-hand
corners, Reid has nailed them
all.Yet most of hurling’s top
penalty takers now are raising
green flags. And the numbers
to date this summer prove
that the penalty takers have
taken the power back off the
goalkeepers.of what the striker is likely
to do. Yet unlike soccer,
where tracking individual
penalty shooting trends is
often decisive in winning
shootouts, power overrides
much of that detail in
hurling.Accuracy married with
power takes it to a whole
new level. The best penalty
taken over the last two
seasons was a strike from
Forde against Waterford in
the 2018 Allianz League in
Thurles, a rocket just inside
the right post which hit the
side-netting.“When you stick it right
in the corner there is no
getting to them,” said
Waterford goalkeeper
Stephen O’Keeffe in 2016.
“It comes down to the
penalty-takers on the
big days holding their
nerve because we do
them in training and, as a
goalkeeper, you can’t read
which side it is going to
go. You can’t react quickLIMERICK’S SHANE DOWLING SCORES A GOAL FROM
A PENALTY PAST CORK GOALKEEPER IN LAST YEAR’S
ALL-IRELAND SEMI-FINAL.
BELOW, KILKENNY’S TJ REID TAKING A PENALTY
AGAINST CARLOW IN THIS YEAR’S LEINSTER
CHAMPIONSHIP