What do you think of this fact?
Every penalty shootout you have ever bitten your nails through goes back to one man. And he wasn’t a striker. William McCrum was a goalkeeper, and not exactly a successful one.
The worst team in the league
McCrum kept goal for Milford FC, a club from a village in County Armagh, in what is now Northern Ireland. He was the heir of a wealthy linen family and had studied at Trinity College Dublin. In the very first season of the Irish Football League, 1890-91, Milford lost all 14 of its games, finished with 0 points and conceded 62 goals.
Fed up with deliberate fouls near the goal, McCrum came up with a fix in 1890: a free shot at goal from 12 yards whenever a defender fouled or handled the ball on purpose close to his own goal. As a member of the Irish Football Association, he got the idea passed on to the International Football Association Board (IFAB). Critics mocked it as the “Irishman’s motion”.
A handball changes everything
Then came an FA Cup quarter-final in February 1891. Notts County led Stoke 1-0 in the final minute when a County defender simply handled a goal-bound shot. The rules only allowed an indirect free kick, so County players lined up on the goal line and blocked it. Stoke were out.
That scene helped turn opinion. In June 1891, IFAB approved the penalty kick at a meeting in Glasgow. The early version looked a bit different: the ball went anywhere on a line 12 yards from goal, and the goalkeeper was allowed to come out up to 6 yards. The penalty spot only arrived in 1902.
Bonus fact: Not everyone liked the idea. Many gentlemen of the game refused to believe a gentleman would ever foul on purpose, and the Corinthians goalkeeper reportedly stepped aside when facing a penalty.
McCrum himself lost the family fortune and died almost destitute in 1932. Today Milford calls itself the home of the penalty kick. Not bad for the keeper of a team that didn’t earn a single point all season.