WHERE THERE IS SKILL THERE IS A WAY Says Rory Gallagher
Donegal v Tyrone Clones, 2pm
GOOD skill, not good stats, is what appeals to Donegal manager Rory Gallagher.
He has injected youthful promise into the county’s senior football team this year, and carrying one of the smallest back-room teams in the game, Gallagher prefers to focus on what he can see with the naked eye.
“The first thing I as a coach and we as a management team look for is skilful footballers who make good decisions,” he said.
“A lot is made of tactics, but there are so many split-second decisions that have to be made, whether it is without the ball or with the ball.
“If it is a counter attack you have a decision to make, if you are facing a team that has set-up against your kick-out, you have a decision to make as to where to go.
“You can point things out afterwards on the training pitch, you call illustrate the rights and wrongs with post match video analysis but you have to trust those players and the best players don’t need a whole lot of guidance that way. They know the right thing to do.”
Gallagher will trust his players to do the right thing more often than not in today’s Ulster semi-final clash against Mickey Harte’s (below) Tyrone at Clones.
Fine margins will determine the outcome and Gallagher won’t need to turn around to a row of ‘experts’ with clipboards sitting behind him to find out what’s happening.
If the GAA has become over dependent on stats for guidance, then the Donegal boss is certainly bucking the trend.
Gallagher explained: “Every week we get asked do we want space for our stats team and I have to explain that we don’t have one!” “We carry a small backroom team.
“We keep our own stats within the management team during a game. We don’t carry a separate stats team.
“I generally think as a coach it should be something that you should be able to see with your eye.
“You can tell when a player is working hard. I have seen players produce the best GPS stats in games without actually really contributing to a football match.
“Footballers come first and foremost - athleticism is part of it but we are not really interested in GPS figures for games.”