Corofin v Padraig Pearses 2019 Connacht Club Final

Nothing spectacular from Corofin. 1 – 00 from their two attempts at goal; 0 – 03 from four frees and 0 – 07 from 13 on point attempts. Expected to score 13 points. Scored 1 – 10. All in all, an average enough outing.

I imagine Pearses will be annoyed with their days work. They missed two relatively straight forward central frees which were somewhat cancelled out by a converted 45. But that 45 aside they skied a very good one on one goal chance and converted just 0 – 03 from 8 point attempts.

Those numbers don’t take into account their very slow start. It was the 12th minute before they controlled the ball inside Corofin’s 45 with a Niall Daly point attempt. It was the 19th minute before a Pearses player completed a pass from within the 45 by which time they had only controlled the ball twice inside the 45 (alongside Daly’s shot Carey attempted a free out on the sideline after getting fouled).
And yet for all that after 40 minutes it was 0 – 06 apiece and Pearses were 13-12 ahead on the shot count.

Reading way too much into it Corofin let Pearses hang around despite their terrible (metric wise) start but once Pearses drew level they upped it a gear, scored 1 – 02 in five minutes, allowing Pearses just one possession in that time, and then saw out the game.

Corofin shooting

Corofin were their clinical selves “inside” scoring 1 – 07 from just nine shots with the missed attempt being a contested fisted goal attempt from a dropping diagonal ball.

Disc = score, X = miss; red = goal attempt, yellow = deadball, black = point attempt from play 1st half, white = point attempt from play 2nd half

The flip side is that their “outside” shooting was quite poor; 0 – 02 from 8 from play.

This may just be a blip – not only in terms of Conversion Rate but also volume. They were 0 – 03 from just five attempts “outside” against BallintubberBallintubberBallintubber and in their devastating 1st halves against Dr Crokes and Gaoth Dobhair (below), at the end of last year’s campaign, attempted just 5 of 26 shots from “outside”

When it matters, they don’t do “outside” shooting.

Corofin’s range of attacking players was again on display here. From their 15 shots from play they had 11 different shooters. Padraig Pearses had five (and only one was not named Daly!).
Ian Burke’s quick hands were on full display again – giving the pass inside for Liam Silke’s goal and also providing the primary assist on four other point attempts.

Kickouts

Nothing much there to be honest. But we now have two Corofin games where we can overlay their kickouts.

30 kickouts in the two games with Corofin winning possession on 77% (23 of 30). One third (10) have gone short (which is below intercounty rates) with Corofin getting their hands on all of them.
Of those that have gone past the 45 Corofin have won possession 60% of the time (12 – 8). This is good – for intercounty Championship games the kickout team wins x% of kickouts past the 45. Looking at the kickout map they prefer hitting the wings in and around the 65 – and avoid the dangerous middle between the 45 & 65. They don’t rely on Marks – only the one across the two games

Tags: 2019, Club, Connacht, Corofin, Padraig Pearses