OLD-SCHOOL THINKING
Rory Gallagher doesn’t have a stats team in the Donegal set-up, insisting it won’t help players make decisions in heat of battle
RORY GALLAGHER gets a kick every time Donegal hits the road and he is asked the same question. ‘Every week we get asked do we want space for our stats team and I have to explain that we don’t have one,’ he laughs.
This is Donegal; the county who more than any other is perceived to paint football by numbers.
But while other elite counties regularly have a three- or four-man stats team, Donegal keep it low-tech and in-house.
They sort it out themselves within their small backroom team, keeping a tally on the basics such as restarts before taking on the detailed work post-match when time is their friend if they want to go number crunching.
It is an old-school pragmatism that is central to Gallagher’s philosophy, which states that football is a random thing which requires smarts and not stats to make sense of.
‘I generally think as a coach it should be something that you should be able to see with your eye,’ says Gallagher. ‘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.’
That runs contrary to the perception of the group he inherited. They were seen as the ultimate systems team, defending in unison, counter-attacking in synchronised waves.
It was the making them of in 2012 and the breaking of them two years later.
The damning image from that latter final was of a losing team bunkered in, while Kerry bled the game-clock in the closing minutes by being left free to keep the ball.
The downside of a system is that it can leave a team unable to think for itself and that has been the most obvious change of emphasis in the handover.
‘A lot is made of tactics, but there are so many split-second decisions that have to be made in the moment, whether it is without the ball or with the ball,’ Gallagher remarks.
‘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.
‘All those are split-second decisions – you can’t make them for players.
‘You have to trust players and the best players don’t need a whole lot of guidance that way.
‘They have the answer for you, they know the right thing to do.’
In truth, they always have. It was sometimes lost in their apparent structural rigidity under previous manager Jim McGuinness that it took smart ball players to play the Donegal way.
To become champions, they went from a massed defensive team to one that could draw blood while remaining true to a defensively nuanced game-plan.
Many have tried to follow them and most have failed because they simply did not have the players to do it.
Donegal still have, not least in their older players such as Neil McGee, Karl Lacey, Michael Murphy and Frank McGlynn.
Gallagher’s use of McGlynn last season emphasised that. He started him regularly at centre-forward and while he inevitably drifted back to a deeper slot to sweep, the number on his back reminded of his play-making ability.
McGlynn serves as another reminder that not all modern day footballers are to be found at the end of a protein shake.
‘I always remember when he waddled back into training in 2011 you could see he was carrying a wee bit of beef, but you could just see the awareness he had, his decision-making, his awareness of space, his ability to read a situation, when to go tight and mark and when to spring when he spots a gap,’ added Gallagher.
‘He creates so many goal chances, in my opinion he is an exceptional player.
‘He is an old-school player in that he would not be interested in nutrition diets or GPS systems or anything like that.
‘Along with Karl, Michael, and Neil, it is their decision-making over their athleticism that stands out. It is down to their skill level, really.
‘Michael is a fantastic example of that. When he first arrived on the scene, his fetching of the ball over his head was not as strong as it is now, his ability to kick scores with his left was not as pronounced. He has developed all that.
‘I think that is why Kerry are the leaders of this game, it is down to developing their skills and their capacity to make good decisions. That is what the game is about,’ suggested the manager.
And that is what Gallagher is making Donegal about.
He has blooded new players this season, with half a dozen making their Championship debut against Antrim last time out when they ran out convincing winners on a 3-19 to 1-9 scoreline.
The presence of so many young rookies thrown in at the deep end today against Tyrone should be a source of concern, but he is not fazed for a reason.
‘I am pleased with their physical development, I think some of them are far from finished but we don’t set out to grow body-builders, we set out to grow footballers.’
And there is no number that can put a value on that.