GLOVE AND WAR
Stats shock to keeper Mark in battle against Covid-19 in sport
MARK ANTHONY MCGINLEY is “surprised” at findings that Gaelic footballers spend an average of just 2.5 seconds within two metres of each other during games.
The results, courtesy of Newry-based Statsports, are more encouraging in some respects when data from training sessions is considered, with incursions into players’ twometre zone only lasting 1.6 seconds on average, lower than the threshold to contract coronavirus.
However, these incursions occur far more often at training sessions, an average of 43 per minute compared to 17 in matches.
It raises hopes Gaelic football and hurling can resume at club level at least this year, however, even if there are other metrics around players’ respiratory habits that also need to be factored in.
Statsports carried out a similar study on Premier League clubs’ training sessions where the average incursion period was 3.3 seconds – more than double that for Gaelic games.
Former Donegal netminder Mcginley now plays in goal for
League of Ireland side Finn Harps and, while somewhat taken aback by the comparative findings, on reflection, he set out likely reasons for the outcome.
“I suppose when you think of it, the pitch is much smaller,” he said. “It’s easier to move the ball in Gaelic, but it’s still surprising.
“In the soccer, with offside and all, even the size of the pitch is smaller and the pitch is condensed with your two back fours and most of the play happens in between the two back fours and so the pitch, even though it’s a smaller pitch than the Gaelic, it’s condensed from that.
“The big one I would probably
say, just from thinking about it, it’s a lot easier to move the ball in Gaelic.
“You have a handpass and you have a kickpass whereas in soccer, if you have the pitch a bit condensed, and then you have a team hunting the ball, it’s a lot harder to move the ball.
“There’d be more physicality in a Gaelic tackle, closer contact, where in soccer there doesn’t necessarily have to be bodily contact with a sliding tackle,”
Mcginley then explained.
“In Gaelic it’s normally physical, you try and stop the man with your body and then you get the hands in most of the time.
“But if there’s a man coming off the shoulder you just pop it to him and it’s gone, you mightn’t actually need to take the contact.” As a goalkeeper, Mcginley finds soccer the more physical code though he suggests that the opposite would apply for outfield players – particularly those operating in the middle eight in Gaelic football.
Furthermore, goalkeepers tend to partake in more specialised training though in terms of the respective times for incursions in training – 1.6 seconds in Gaelic games compared to 3.3 seconds in soccer – he believes that set-pieces are a significant factor in the variance.
Corner-kick and free-kick scenarios, where 15-plus players are jammed into the penalty area, are worked on far more intensely in soccer than set-plays in Gaelic football, which don’t typically generate the same congregation of players in a concentrated area around goal given that the option of simply kicking for a point is the higher percentage play.
“Ah, 100 per cent,” says Mcginley. “You’d do that most days of the week that you’re in in soccer.
“Most sessions you’d have some sort of set piece where you’d be working on something whereas in Gaelic the only set piece you’d really work on would be the kickouts and that might be one session a week on that.
“In soccer you’d be working on corners one day, free kicks the next day so definitely there’d be more set pieces involved in training in soccer than in Gaelic.”