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Number’s up for stat men
By Eamonn O'Molloy
 Analysis,
statistics and odds? I’d rather have a moment of magic any time!
IF news is something you didn’t already know, then I made a serious mistake
in my choice of game on Sunday when I went to Newbridge to watch Kildare
lose 2-8 to 1-12 to Galway.
It seemed a good choice. Apart from the presence of new managers, Kieran
McGeeney and Liam Sammon, the sides were clashing 10 years on from their
iconic 1998 All-Ireland final, when Galway’s forward class overcame
Kildare’s blanket defence and hard running.
But there was no news, not on the face of it. Kildare, if nowhere near
as good as in 1998, are still full of heart and hard running and a can-do
attitude. They were seven points and a man down just before half-time
but put so much graft into winning the game that they will look on the
encounter as two points dropped.
In the end though, just as in ’98, Galway won because they are more
at ease with a football in their hands. Kildare had 25 minutes of dominance
from half-time and painstakingly fought back level, every point mined
out of granite despite their lack of comfort in kicking the ball where
they wanted it to go.
And then Galway dominated for about seven minutes and kicked four effortless
points, three of them absolute beauties from long range.
Here’s a seemingly flawed statement I’ll spend the rest of
the piece trying to justify: Kildare will fail in their ultimate objectives
just as Armagh did and Kieran McGeeney and Paul Grimley are the common
link.
It’s sacrilege, most people would say, to link Armagh and failure
in any conceivable way. Under Joe Kernan, they won four Ulster titles,
a National League and an All-Ireland.
But I was raised to believe that success for a great football team is
measured in All-Irelands; which puts Galway, Kerry and Tyrone ahead of
the Orchard in the last 10 years.
Kieran McGeeney had already absorbed some statistical analysis before
he spoke to the media yesterday. The 8,000 or so people in Newbridge would
more or less all have felt that Kildare came from seven down because they
moved Dermot Earley from full-forward to midfield for the second-half.
But McGeeney and all of a new wave of football coaches and analysts who
live by the statistics love to look deeper and inform people that their
eyes have deceived them, that they have arrived at their conclusion because
their minds have prejudged the situation.
He pointed out that Kildare had won no more primary possession in midfield
in the second-half than they had in the first, intimating that he would
retain the option of playing Earley full-forward because the numbers told
him that the switch had made no difference.
And that is why, while Kildare will most likely become more consistent
and tougher to beat under their new regime, mantlepieces on the plains
will not get weighed down with medals in the years to come.
Armagh ultimately suffered from the same malaise. True, their formulaic
play and upturn-every-pebble preparation made them one of the most consistent
teams in history. They never attempted to score, for example, from a sideline
kick, as statistics told them that it was an unwise percentage play.
While their play-by-the-numbers crushed many a team and even made them
fascinating to watch, I’d contend that it often proved their downfall.
Their unwillingness to allow for a moment of genius, for the psychological
impact a rare touch of brilliance can have on a crowd or the opposition,
for the value of a couple of creative players thinking on their feet,
left them short of Tyrone on a couple of crucial days and of Kerry in
2006.
Their win over a Kerry team that played the most stylish and off-the-cuff
football we have seen for many a day in 2002 is taken by the new wave
as proof that the analytical man with the numbers at hand (Joe Kernan)
will always triumph over the misguided traditionalist (Páidí
Ó Sé).
Armagh looked at the half-time numbers that day, saw they weren’t
winning enough breaking ball, rectified it, and won the game.
But all that ignores the reality that Kerry missed two sitting first-half
goal chances even as they built a 0-8 to 0-4 lead. That if they had taken
them, they would most likely have won by around 10 points.
Every football team must use statistics like Armagh did at half-time that
September. But football teams and footballers are not machines. New-wave
coaches hate talk of heart, of presence, of innate football ability, because
they are unquantifiable factors.
McGeeney is right: Earley won no more primary ball than his first-half
predecessors did on Sunday. But his very presence, his football brain,
his heart and his instinct turned the match around; just as Galway’s
ingrained self-assurance to do the right thing at the right time, to back
themselves to kick a 40-yard point even when it wasn’t the percentage
play, took it away again.
Look at the numbers instead of the game and you’ll see none of this.
Football is a game that hinges not just on the inches but on the instinct
as well.
It’s Maurice Fitzgerald pinging that low and glorious pass to Mike
Frank in 2000, a situation where an Armagh man would play a high diagonal
ball because it has a statistically greater chance of success.
It’s Ja Fallon defying Kildare with a 50-metre bomb whose value
went beyond a single point; Armagh wouldn’t shoot from that distance
as the figures say they’d be unlikely to score.
It’s Donaghy leaving Bellew on his arse and the way you “just
knew” from that moment that Kerry would not be beaten that day.
It’s Páidí reversing 100 years of losing in a few
months in Westmeath, something no-one has done before or since, not with
statistical readouts but with his presence and passion.
Don’t get us wrong: If McGeeney and his ilk stick slavishly to the
numbers, their teams will win a hell of a lot of games.
Just not the ones that really matter. |
