[Devongone]

"Wayne's back went into spasm. It's not the first time it's happened." Roy Hodgson.

I know it was only decent Sunday and Saturday League I played in. Okay we had a lot of part-time Saturday part-time pros in the Sunday League top division then ....... so it wasn't bad.

I played every Saturday and Sunday in goal for ten years until a bad injury got me AND:-

• I never once got injured warming-up.
  I never once dived during a warm-up.
  All we ever did was a kick-in with handling practice.
  I thought about my game and the game in general a lot, over-thought if anything, and in all that time I never once thought that an early goal had beaten me, because I hadn't warmed-up properly and I can recall making saves very early in the game too.
  I can also recall lots of games where I never got a touch for half an hour and my first action was a gut-wrenching save in the bottom corner ........ at a point when any warm-up on a freezing cold day had long-departed my body.
  

Additionally it is only in recent years that I remember goalkeepers departing the field injured BEFORE the game in the professional game. It was as near to a NEVER incident as dammit.

What a goalkeeper does in a game is often nothing for long periods followed by moments of very athletic action. It requires both mental and physical agility. Diving about minutes before a game has no positive impact on your ability to dive during it - it is likely anyway to be a different kind of dive to any you prepared earlier!

My advice to Mr Hodgson would be to let Wayne warm up gently. Give him catching practice. Make sure he has a ball to hold in the dressing room pre-game and a quiet corner to sit in to think about what he is going to do and rehearse it in his head .......... And then he might find he's got a fit goalie who makes a few fewer howlers. Fifteen minutes quite contemplation pre-match would be far more valuable than fifteen minutes of pretty pointless exercise in front of in-coming fans.

As a nation we used to have some of the best keepers in the world. Listen to Final Score any Saturday and you'll hear non-goalies and even some goalies discussing a litany of howlers. Someone must be doing something wrong. What do you think Roy?

[St Charles Owl]

Players can pick up injuries doing just about anything but as you say having a warm up as vigorous as some goalkeepers have surely raises the chances of something being tweaked!! Its interesting when you think about it that the one player in a team who does the least amount of a actual running and often as you say the least activity of any sort is the one who warms up the hardest!! We see the outfield players doing some short sprints, running around a few cones and casually passing a ball to each other but the goalkeeper is there diving around as if his life depended on it, doesn’t make much sense!!

[Devongone]

What teams ask pre-game of keepers is the eqiuivalent of saying to Usain Bolt, "Okay guy you're warming up doin' a 50 metre flat-out against Gatlin, then we'll see how close you can get in a 400 to the British 4x100 women's team ....."

It's mental and it's organised by former goalkeepers too. I think it is kind of a showcase by the goalkeeping coach to show what he does all week. Otherwise that dropped cross that leads to a 75th minute equalizer is all the fans see. And they might conclude the goalkeeping coach is a waste of time and money ......... and looking around the English game they'd be so right.