Posts Tagged ‘Connacht’

Corofin v Padraig Pearses 2019 Connacht Club Final

November 27, 2019

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

Corofin v Ballintubber 2019 Connacht Club SF

November 13, 2019

In many ways the game was similar to the 2018 Connacht final (review here) in that the overall numbers (possessions, shots, Conversion Rates) were quite close but Corofin never really felt in any trouble. The below is an extract from that 2018 game

But the main reason for their easy third was due to a devastating 15 minute spell from the 33rd minute onwards. In that period Corofin had 16 possessions taking eleven shots … and scoring 1 – 08 (Conversion Rate of 82% with an Expt Pts +3.06).

Corofin had less of a surge in this game but they again showed their clinical nature in the third quarter scoring 1 – 04 from just 5 shots (Expt pts of +3.53) enabling them to ease out to a six point lead after 45 minutes. Ballintubber showed great battling qualities to get within one heading into injury time but the damage had been done.

In another way this game was very different from 2018. The 2018 version was a veritable turnover fest with 90 total possessions of which 58 (64%) were turnovers. Both teams were very careful with the ball here producing just the 63 total possessions in total of which 28 (44%) were turnovers. Both teams played “keep ball” for long periods with 20 of the possessions having a string of at least 10 passes.

That volume of possessions is not just low compared to the 2018 game but very low full stop. On a straight line conversion to a 70 minute intercounty game (they are not the same thing with injury time etc. but this is just for illustrative purposes!) those 63 possessions grade out at 74. The average intercounty Championship total in 2018 & 2019 was 90. In 150 games since 2015 only one game – Fermanagh v Monaghan in 2018 – came in at lower than 74. This was a possession game brought to the extremes.

 

Corofin’s defense

Much has been made (both by myself and others) of the Corofin attack. It wasn’t at full throttle here (50% Conversion Rate from play; 1 – 05 from 12) though the depth of their attack can be gauged by the fact that (a) their three goal shots didn’t come from the vaunted forwards but instead Kieron Molloy & Liam Silke and (b) Gary Sice was 0 – 03 from 3 on frees in 2018 but didn’t take one here when they went 0 – 05 from 5.

Instead of focussing on the attack it is work taking a quick look at their defence through the lens of Ballintubber shooting.

Ballintubber’s slow build up would appear not to have worked. Corofin were able to maintain as clean a “D” as you are likely to see allowing no shot at goal and just two attempts from the very outer edge of the shooting arc.

But the slow build up is not the sole reason for this paucity of close shooting. In the 2018 game (shot chart below) only three Ballintubber shots were taken close to goal despite it being a very different type of game.

In ~130 minutes of high level club football Corofin were able to keep Ballintubber to one goal attempt, did not allow a shot from a free from closer than 35 metres, and only allowed six of 28 point attempts (21%) from “inside”.

Galway V Mayo 2013

May 21, 2013

For those new to the blog, or who haven’t been here for a while, please find a refresher on the definitions and how the numbers are compiled here

Overall

Team Possessions Shots Shot Rate Scores Success Rate Weighting
Galway 31 26 84% 11 42% -1.393
Mayo 36 31 86% 20 65% +3.8949
2012 avg 35.28 27.02 76.6% 13.96 51.67%

Mayo’s numbers are very good but would you expect anything less from a team that scores 4-16, plays half the game against 14 and a good chunk of the second half against 13?

The fact that they had a stroll in the second half should not colour our view on just how good they were in the first half. They scored 12 times from 15 shots (10 /13 from play) with a Weighting of +4.56 in that first half and generally got their most consistent shooters on the end of moves. Dillon converted his two shots with Varley converting 3 from 5.

The flip side of that good first half Mayo performance is the Galway defending. Of the 13 shots that Mayo took from play I counted pressure on only 5 (38%). In the first half of a Championship game you have been targeting for months that is poor.

As a contrast Galway took 8 shots from play in that first half with Mayo pressurising 75% of them and actually blocking 3.

Now the second half can be completely written off as a contest however even with Mayo asleep at the wheel for the first 10 minutes (they only had one possession in that period to Galway’s 8) Galway couldn’t get a score from play. Again Mayo pressurised any shots they did take (pressure on 5 of the 7) and blocked a further two shots in the second half.

Shots from play

Team Shots Scores Success Rate Weighting
Galway 15 3 20% -3.498
Mayo 27 16 59% +3.3749
2012 avg 20.14 9.36 46.47%

Mayo’s second half shooting from play was actually below their first despite the numerical advantage. They hit 77% (10 from 13) in the first half but only 43% (6 from 14) in the second however we can forgive them this as the intensity had gone at that stage.

There’s not that much that can be said about Galway’s shooting that a return of 3 points and a Success Rate of 20% doesn’t already convey. One thing to note from Galway’s shot chart below, in relation to Mayo’s, is how wide the shots are; and when they did get in front of goals Mayo blocked 3 of the 4 shots from Sector 8.

Shots from deadballs

Player Shots Scores Success Rate Weighting
C O’Connor (Mayo) 4 4 100% +0.52
M Meehan (Galway) 8 5 63% +0.7793
S Armastrong (Galway) 2 2 100% +0.884
S Walsh (Galway) 1 1 100% +0.442
2012 team avgs 6.88 4.6 66.9%

One area of the game that Galway did have some positives in was here. All three players had above average days whilst they managed to keep O’Connor to only 4 attempts from frees.

Shot charts
Mayo’s shot chart is quite interesting in that they have two distinct clusters. One is in Sector 5 in which they scored 7 from 7 (including 3 O’Connor frees) whilst the other is Sector 7 just inside the 21m line where they only hit 2 from 7 (both Dillon’s points incidentally – he is an exceptionally accurate shooter).

Galway’s shooting

Galway shooting
x = missed, disc = score

Mayo’s shooting

Mayo shooting
x = missed, disc = score

Kickouts

Kickouts

There are a couple of things that strike me immediately from the kickout battle.
–> Firstly Mayo had a +7 shot differential on kickouts won. That is a very nice position to have where there will be c54 shots in an average game.
–> Mayo won 88% (15 from 17) of their own kickouts. Yes they hit 8 short but they still won possession on 8 of the other 9 (89%) kickouts
–> Ultimately though they were devastatingly efficient on Galway’s kickouts. Although they gained possession on 15 of their own kickouts they only converted that to 5 shots. On Galway’s kickouts they converted 11 wins into 8 shots.

Player’s contributions can often go unnoticed if they are not getting their name on the scoreboard. One such player on Sunday was Kevin McLoughlin. At the start of the game, when everything was to play for, he got his hands on breaking ball from 4 of Galway’s first 6 kickouts. He emerged with the ball cleanly 3 times and won a free the fourth – those 4 possessions turned into 3 points, settled Mayo down and laid the platform for an excellent start.

Players with >= 2 shots from play
Not much to be added here except that someone in the Mayo camp needs to have a word with Dillon. He needs to shoot more – in Mayo’s last 4 Championship games he has hit 9 from 11 (82%) from play and hit the post with one of his misses

Shots Scores Success Rate Weighting
E Varley (Mayo) 6 4 67% +1.5671
D Cummins (Galway) 5 2 40% -0.3896
C O’Connor (Mayo) 4 2 50% -0.1788
M Meehan (Galway) 3 0 0% -1.379
D Vaughan (Mayo) 2 2 100% +1.0655
A Dillon (Mayo) 2 2 100% +1.0313
P Conroy (Galway) 2 1 50% +0.3887
C Carolan (Mayo) 2 1 50% +0.2395
A Freeman (Mayo) 2 1 50% +0.1493
D Coen (Mayo) 2 1 50% +0.1375
L Keegan (Mayo) 2 1 50% -0.0247
S Walsh (Galway) 2 0 0% -0.7046
S O’Shea (Mayo) 2 0 0% -1.196