About GaelicStats

About Rob Carroll

Rob has spent more than two decades turning Gaelic football matches into evidence coaches, researchers and supporters can use. He founded The Video Analyst in 2008 and began building the GaelicStats match archive in 2011.

His work spans inter-county teams, three International Rules campaigns as lead performance analyst, and more than a decade supplying data and analysis to the GAA. That includes research into how the game is changing and evidence to inform discussions about its playing rules.

Alongside his work with teams and the Association, Rob has published academic research and written tactical and statistical analysis for The42. GaelicStats brings that experience to a wider audience: a connected record of the game that can be explored, questioned and improved.

Every total starts with a match.

Players, appearances, scores, counties, opponents, competitions and results are linked to individual games. Career and season totals are calculated from those match records, rather than maintained separately as headline numbers.

How the records are built

Where available, records are compiled and checked against contemporary match reports, official GAA records, team sheets and match programmes, newspaper archives, photographic evidence and other established statistical sources.

The surviving evidence varies. Some matches can be checked against several independent sources; others have only one reliable record. A published result does not, by itself, establish that every other detail of a match is complete.

How to read the statistics

• Appearances: a recorded appearance includes a start or coming on as a substitute. Substitute-on indicators show who entered the game; off indicators are withheld while timing discrepancies are reviewed. Minutes played are not published.
• Player records: careers are recorded within each county. A player who represents two counties has a separate record for each.
• Scoring: goals and points are kept distinct, along with the recorded score origin, such as play, a free, a mark or a penalty. Unknown origins remain unknown.

Score-origin coverage

Score-origin coverage before 2011 is incomplete. A scoring total may be complete even when the origin of each score is not recorded. Where the available evidence does not identify whether a score came from play, a free, a 45 or another source, its origin remains unknown.

Placed-ball figures count only scores recorded as coming from a placed ball. A zero or a lower placed-ball figure does not establish that the remaining scores came from play. Season and individual match origin breakdowns are hidden for 2010 and earlier because coverage is incomplete. Known origins from those years still contribute to career totals. Later origin breakdowns may also be incomplete and are updated when stronger match-level evidence becomes available.

Checking the data

Automated checks flag inconsistencies for review, including:

• scorers with no matching recorded appearance;
• possible duplicate identities or duplicate appearances in one match;
• broken links between players, counties and games;
• differences between recorded scoring and match results; and
• unexpected combinations of records or inconsistent timing.

These checks help identify systematic errors; they do not replace a review of the source evidence. Known exceptions, including own goals, are reviewed separately rather than forcing records to fit an assumed pattern.

Accuracy follows the evidence.

GaelicStats aims to be as accurate as the available evidence allows. It is not an infallible historical record.

Contemporary reports can disagree, names can appear under different spellings and published career totals can contain errors. Some matches have limited surviving documentation. GaelicStats may therefore differ from another published source.

A disagreement does not establish which source is right. Material discrepancies are reviewed against the underlying match records and the strongest available evidence.

The objective is not to preserve an existing number. It is to arrive at the best-supported record.