Training age is the cumulative amount of time you’ve spent training for a particular sport. It refers to a cumulative workload (and skill level) built over years and years.

This of course is not just about time. I’ve been driving for 16 years and I’ve seen very little improvement. You need to be in and around environments that push you, have coaches or mentors that test you constantly to evolve and get better.

As a player moves from club to county the premise is that he is now exposed to better coaches, surrounded by better players in training and playing a higher standard of opposition. All of these factors should contribute to a player and team’s development.

To bridge the performance gap teams started to put in more hours. Early morning training and extra sessions were a plenty. But there are only so many hours in the day. Counties are finally realising that more does not necessarily equal better. Now there is more emphasis on talent both on the pitch and behind the scenes.

This week Andy McEntee highlighted the importance he placed on having his preferred Strength and Conditioning coach as part of, not just his management ticket, but the entire Meath set-up.

“To be perfectly honest, it was part of the gig when I came in. I would have been reluctant to do it without him, that is how much I regard him.”

He is now fulfilling a role similar to Bryan Cullen for Dublin or Cathal Cregg for Connacht. You can expect many other counties to follow suit, counties employing expertise to work across an entire system rather than on a nod and a wink from the senior manager.

It highlights the importance of getting the right people in behind the scenes. But the nature of the competition structure builds in a constant disadvantage. Successful teams play more games and by extension have longer seasons (under expert supervision).

Last season as we mentioned Dublin began their competitive season in January and ended it in October. Wicklow were out by the middle of June.

What is startling when you look at the actual figures, the cumulative effect of shorter seasons means there is a built in sense of the inevitable about the inter-county scene.

Even if the much maligned county board could stump up to hire all the ologists possible, unless teams start winning and making their season longer it’s hard to see them ever catching the big guys.

The table below shows the week each county has finished their season in for the last 10. For example in 2016 Dublin & Mayo finished in week 40 while a team like Down finished a full 14 weeks previously.

Taking an average of just 3 training sessions a week that’s at least 42 training sessions. Even if you said the backroom teams of these two counties were of equal quality (and that’s an unrealistic assumption) that’s a lot more expert-led training those Dublin players have over Down. Starting the 2017 season Dublin are at least 42 sessions and 7 games ahead of Down, all other things being equal.

When we add this up over the course of say 10 years we can see that Kerry and Dublin average a season of about 36 weeks while mid-tier teams like Armagh, Kildare & Roscommon have seasons lasting just 29 weeks.

That’s on average about 7 weeks per year which is over 200 extra training sessions in a 10 year period. (again assuming our 3 sessions a week measure)

Build in the squad turnover most teams outside of Monaghan, Donegal, Dublin and Kerry have and you can see a huge discrepancy open up between the have’s and have not’s.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whether winning causes more stable squads or vice-versa the net result is the same. Winning teams have longer seasons, with more stable squads, usually under expert led coaching staff.

I had this conversation recently with a manager from a weaker county. There were the usual grievances about receiving a more level playing field in terms of financing but what really transpired was that without extending the season (games and time) his players would file back to the clubs where the structures just aren’t there to keep the development going.

I’m no believer that we should create an artificial method to get weaker teams into the semi-finals. Any competition should be about getting the best to play each other but the different season length has a big impact on the ability of the weaker counties to make up the difference, even if the funding is in place.

Staying alive in the championship has many upsides (not least you might actual win something) but not to be underestimated is the amount of training time these players receive or more importantly the weaker county players miss out on. Having additional games is vital but if the actual season length allows for such large discrepancies it’s hard to see teams making those giant leaps forward.

Check out how each county has performed against every other county.

There is an Iker Casillas quote that seems to sum up much of the narrative around Gaelic Football at the moment.

Most kids dream of scoring the perfect goal, I’ve always dreamed of stopping it

While there are no doubt some kids around the world who dream like Iker, the majority want to score them. Likewise I imagine there are very few kids who are dreaming of playing in a blanket defence. Sure they will take the county jersey if it comes, but most want to do the scoring not stop it.

Fans will talk longer about the great forwards of the game, than the great defenders. The prestigious Ballon d’Or  has had only 3 vaguley defensive winners since 1976 and the last true defender to win Footballer of the year was Marc O’Se in 2007.

In The Numbers Game, authors Chris Anderson and David Sally discuss the two histories of football;

One is a tale of wonderful players, of ingenuity and guile and wizardry, constantly finding new ways to improve on (what at the time looks like) perfection.

And there is a second history, one of the men who did all they could to stop them. Not the defenders, but the managers, who dreamed up catenaccio and zonal marking and the sweeper system, all of it designed to stop the virtuosos showcasing their talents. Even the tiki-taka style honed and perfected by Barcelona and adopted by Spain has been labeled a primarily defensive approach—passenaccio—because its emphasis is on starving the opposition of the ball.

Players have improved as the game has matured: They run faster, they shoot harder, they dribble quicker, and they pass more accurately. And as they have improved, so structures have been built to contain them. These structures—offside traps, pressing, triangular passing—are the reason that goal scoring has largely withered on the vine, moving from an average of 4.5 goals per game in 1890 to 2.6 goals more than 100 years later.

In soccer there was a time when seven players on any given side were given over to attacking, with two halfbacks and one fullback. That soon morphed into the W-M formation as two attackers were pulled back, and then came the 4-2-4 of Hungary and Brazil, the 4-4-2 so beloved of English managers, and now, the trend is to deploy just one striker. Barcelona and Spain do not even do that, since the rise of what has been called the false nine.

Gaelic Football is going through a similar transition. Recency bias will determine that Jim McGuinness is to blame but the reality is of you read Daire Whelan’s The Mangers,a fascinating history of the tactics and thinkers that have transformed Gaelic Football you will see that the game has constantly had innovators, both in attack and defence. This ‘curse’ of the sweeper did not start or end with Jim McGuinness.

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”

Soccer has transformed itself from a game of 7 attackers & 4 defenders to one built more on 11 attackers and 11 defenders. Gaelic Football is attempting something similar. At the later end of the season watch how many people take pictures of 15 Kerry or Dublin players defending in their own half, as if ‘look, even they are doing it’.

But soccer is a very different game. Despite all the rule changes, (offside, backpass and 3 points for a win) the goals per game has barely moved since the 70’s.

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2013/08/ the_numbers_game_why_soccer_teams_score_fewer_goals_than_they_did_100_years.html

To state the obvious, not conceding guarantees you something in soccer – you can’t be beaten. Therefore it is possible for team in leagues or major competitions to approach games with the ‘we won’t concede’ mentality and that has potential to get them somewhere. In other words soccer allows you put almost all your focus on the stopping part of the game.

This is virtually impossible in Gaelic Football. You have to go back to the 1940’s to find a scoreless team. While the two sports share a lot more in terms of tactics & strategy than traditionalist would care to admit, this is a fundamental difference. The nature of Goals and Points demands that you have to have a strategy for both stopping and scoring, a fact that seems sadly lost on many teams today.

I have reproduced a similar graph as above but for Gaelic Football. It is clear in the soccer image that there was a significant shift in strategy around the 1970’s and despite all the advances in training and preparation, video analysis and coaching standards the new normal began in 1970 and hasn’t be altered since.

Here is the scoring chart for Gaelic Football over a similar time frame.

Data from 1950 – 2016. Qualifiers have been excluded to allow for like for like comparison.

 

See that big drop (orange line) in 2011 and how the trend of conceding less has continued? O wait…

Despite the defensive revolution that McGuinness has apparently blighted the game with; scoring in general is on the rise year-on-year and there is no big dip like in soccer. And for the doubters who say yes the number of points being scored might be the same but that’s because teams like Dublin are doing all the scoring, well the blue line discredits that theory. The average winning margin is almost amazingly consistent since 1950.

My point with all this is two-fold. First I feel the facts should get a fair hearing. You may not like the style the game is currently being played in, but don’t confuse that with the substance of what is on the pitch. Defensive football is not leading to less scores!

Secondly to the managers and coaches. For all the effort put into defensive systems, for the lack of enjoyment the fans seem to get from this style, for the sake of attracting the exciting, ambitious players, you really need to question what value are you getting from this defensive football? Taken as a whole teams are not conceding less than before, as we can see above scoring is on the increase.

Football is not like soccer, you can’t progress by just stopping. I look forward to the next iteration of the game, I hope it goes on the attack.

It’s a different game these days. Impact subs and panels that extend beyond 30. “You need a big panel of players to cope with the demands of the modern game with it’s physical demands” they say. Even rules changes now allow for more players to take the field with Black Cards and additional substitutes.

But I wonder what the evidence says. Are any of the above statements true? Are we seeing counties use more players and as a result this is to the detriment of the ‘weaker’ counties with limited playing populations.

To try and answer this question I can now delve into my Player Database which goes back to 2006 and take a look at the evolution or lack thereof of squad sizes. Granted it would be great to look through the last 125 years of squads but that will take me a bit longer to organise. For now we can use 2006 as our starting point and 10 season should give us some indication of change, if any has happened.

Average Players Used

In 2006 the average number of players used by 31 counties* was 24.3 and 10 seasons later in 2015 it’s now 25! Yes on average squads are using 1 extra player. That doesn’t seem like a big change to me and certainly doesn’t fit the narrative of this new game they are all playing. Whatever playing resources a County needed in 2006 is very similar to what they need today, as you can see from the almost flat line plotting this average over the last 10 years.

Starters v Subs

So that looks at overall how many players were used, but doesn’t really distinguish between starters/subs. So let’s look at the average number of starters counties have used and see if that has ‘evolved’ over the last decade.

2006 = 20

2015 = 19.3

So on average team used less starting players in 2015 than they did in 2006. It’s not a huge change and has hovered around that figure consistently. Counties are using 1 extra player but that’s mostly just an extra sub, the number of starting players is static.

The Have’s v Have Not’s

So we can take this a stage further, let’s look at the difference between good and bad teams. You can argue the toss over successful and unsuccessful for the last decade but let’s say it’s Dublin, Cork, Kerry and Mayo (at least 3 AI Final appearances). We can then compare those 4 teams v’s the rest to see if there is any differences of note.

Average Players Used

First point is there is very little change over time. Successful teams are using the same amount of players as they did in 2006 as are Unsuccessful teams. There does seem to be a difference of about 1 player but this gap has not widened.

Starters Comparison

Again – I can see no evidence of the evolution of bigger squad sizes. 2015 looks a lot like 2006 for both groups. The gap here again is around 1 player.

Bigger Resources = Bigger Squads = Winning ?

I think what is clear from this is that the season to season difference is negligible and even looking at the data county x county doesn’t shed any light on it either.  In a single season all counties tend to use the same playing resources. So is there anything useful to be gathered from squad sizes?

The final graph I will share today is the number of individual players a county has used over the last 10 seasons. This includes starters and subs but should give an idea of player turnover in that time.

10 years is a big time frame to look at. Squads will go through transition periods but at just 58 players Kerry have used the fewest players.

Does success lead to stability or does stability lead to success? Looking at these numbers and especially looking at the above graph since 2012 it seems to me that unsuccessful teams don’t lack for players but they do seem to struggle to retain the same players. In any given year they use the same quantity of players as the best teams, the issue is not enough of them are the same players as the previous year.

A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. The unsuccessful teams are constantly playing catch up with their new/slowest buffalo(s).

*For reference including London and New York doesn’t really change these numbers at all but for the sake of this I have left them out.