DAVID Webster was impressed by Goodall's Walküre. “Reg,” he said, “I think we’ll ask you to do a Ring cycle next season.” It did not materialise. Both cycles in the 1954–55 season were given to Rudolf Kempe, Generalmusikdirektor of the Bavarian State Opera, who was being wooed by Webster – fruitlessly, as it turned out – to be musical director at Covent Garden. Goodall assisted Kempe on The Ring, but did not share the general enthusiasm for his Wagner conducting:

Kempe soon realised that Goodall was out of sympathy with his approach and for one production had him replaced by an assistant brought over specially from East Germany. Goodall, full of disdain (and jealousy), christened the newcomer Herr Liebfraumilch.

Goodall may not have been given a Ring, but that season he did conduct revivals of Wozzeck, La Bohème, Turandot, Manon and Walton's Troilus and Cressida. His handling of Troilus was widely held to be an improvement on that of Sir Malcolm Sargent, who had conducted its premiere at Covent Garden seven months earlier: to the composer's chagrin, Sargent had not learned the score properly. Goodall considered Manon something of a retrograde step. Adele Leigh, who sang the title-role, remembered him arriving for the first rehearsal, banging the score down on the piano and saying crossly, “They’ve given me this!” The highpoint of the season for him was Wozzeck. Audiences were thin, but it was a critical success. William Mann reviewed the first night for Opera: