Changes to the Scoring System
The change to the scoring system is one rule enhancement that has the potential to reshape how the game is played. The most obvious comparison to make is with Basketball and their introduction of the 3 point line. The 3 point-line was thought to be a gimmick when first introduced into Basketball and was eventually adopted in the NBA in 1979, but it didn’t permeate all levels of the game until 1986.
Perhaps more interestingly it wasn’t really until the sports analytics evolution beginning around the start of the millennium that the true value of the 3 pointer was understood, and it still took many years before that knowledge was common practice among the majority of teams.
This is best illustrated by the amazing work of Kirk Goldsberry. He has chartered the 200 most common shot locations and in the chart below demonstrates how an entire genre of shots has disappeared from the game – The Mid Range Shots!
This chart is the 200 most frequently used shot zones and doesn’t mean to imply no shots happen in the mid-range but it is telling that the analysis says having a slightly worse efficiency for a 3 pointer and the ‘easy’ close shots are the ones to take – and the mid-range shots are simply not worth the effort.
Before the introduction of this year’s rule enhancement the GAA analysts and managers have also had their say on shot efficiency. Distance is the number one factor in predicting shot accuracy.
In the chart below you can see that as you move further from goal the likelihood of scoring decreases [the anomaly is the shot at goal inside 13m – but after that it follows a very logical downward trend].
Just like in any evolution, some people can be ahead of the curve and I think Dublin is a great example of this. They have known for a long time that there comes a certain point where taking a pop at goal just simply isn’t worth it.
Take a look at the chart below; it shows the % of a team’s shots (from open play) that are taken at 40m or further. It compares Dublin to every other county since 2011. Interesting to see the massive drop from 2011 to 2012 when Jim Gavin took charge.
In the vast majority of seasons teams are taking between 20-25% of shots from 40m or further out, while Dublin never get above 20% and even had as low as 4% in 2022.*
The reason the mid-range shots have ‘disappeared’ in basketball is simple maths. Given the shooting efficiency of those shots, it’s more advantageous to step back outside the arc and attempt a more difficult 3-pointer. The increase in scoring return is worth the decrease in shot efficiency.
The big question is will we see the same phenomenon in Gaelic Football and where is the mid-range likely to be? For a team like Dublin attempting shots from greater than 40m has never been worth the ‘risk’ so they try to work the ball closer to goal. But now it is worth something extra, will that change behaviour and at what point is it going to be worth retreating backwards to take the lower % shot?
Returning to the very simplistic line chart above we can pick a point along that line and see the shot efficiency from that point. Let’s take a concrete example. At about 45m from goal, players score an average of 29% of the time. This shot will now be worth 2 points so the scoring return from this shot will be .58 or 5.8 points for every 10 shots taken.
At what distance does a team need to be inside the scoring arc to get a similar return? It’s pretty much 25m from the goal. At that point the shot efficiency is .57 or 5.7 points for every 10 shots taken. 30m shots are scored 50% of the time meaning 5 scores per 10 shots. In theory 10 shots from 40-45m are more valuable than 10 shots from the closer range of 30-35m.
All of this data is obviously calculated before the scoring arc existed and teams and players may change strategies to alter these numbers but this is the best knowledge we have today of current behaviour. Given this, it’s plausible to conclude at this stage that purely from a numbers perspective shots taken between 25m and 40m are going to be the GAA’s equivalent of the mid-range. They are of less value than the risker and less efficient shots from further out.
In Gaelic football, the limited number of shots per game—just 50 on average—means that the true shooting abilities of players and teams may not fully reveal themselves within such a small sample size. This stands in stark contrast to basketball, where each team takes nearly 100 shots per game across an 82-game season, providing a far larger dataset to analyze and allowing shooting percentages to stabilize over time.
The results therefore are heavily influenced by individual performances or single events, which makes the numbers in Gaelic football feel a bit unpredictable at times. It’s a reminder that with fewer chances, one great shot—or one bad miss—can change an entire season.
*Before you ask I did check all other teams records and none come even close to Dublin across this time-frame. Kerry are probably the closest and in 2022 only took 3% of shots analysed from 40m or further, but that is an outlier. It seems while most teams and managers might logically conclude that distance is the biggest indicator of shot success, Dublin are the team who most often put it into practice.