Crunching the numbers on Tipp’s campaign so far
By Shane Brophy
After the manic nature of the Munster Hurling Championship round-robin phase and with Tipperary progressing to the All-Ireland Series, but not via a provincial final, it provides all stakeholders, players, mentors and supporters, an opportunity to take stock on what has just gone, and what it could mean going forward.
Tipperary certainly looked less than fully energetic in their final round robin game loss to Waterford, and while everyone would have loved to have been involved in an iconic Munster final occasion, it might have been a bullet dodged for this year considering the attrition rate in terms of the injuries, with the extra week to the preliminary quarter final against Offaly likely working better in their favour overall.
While there is rightly some concern following the nature of the defeat to Waterford, it has to be taken in context as to whom Tipperary didn’t have on the field that day, particularly Jason Forde, Cathal Barrett, and Jake Morris, arguably the three most important players on the team.
Through the course of the four games, Tipperary have used 25 different players, the highest number of any of the other four counties in the province, with nine players having made their championship debuts during the course of the campaign. That is a startling number and makes progressing through the Munster warzone even more impressive.
However, 25 players featuring in four games isn’t ideal, with much of that enforced through injury as same starting line-up unable to feature in subsequent games. 22 different players have started in the four games so that doesn’t lead to a settled team being developed. Michael Breen, Bryan O’Mara, Ronan Maher, Dan McCormack, and Seamus Kennedy have been the only players to play every minute of every game so far.
The biggest surprise was the change of goalkeeper with Barry Hogan starting the first two games against Clare and Cork, doing little wrong to be fair, but was moved out in favour of Rhys Shelly, primarily because of his puck-outs, which were excellent in the draw with Limerick in particular. It is a big call to change your goalkeeper mid-campaign, unless through injury, such is the importance nowadays of the position as they touch the ball more than any other player in a game so how they make use of it is so important in how teams generate attacks.
In that respect, Shelly’s introduction has improved Tipp’s retention rate from puckouts with it rising to 69 & 68 percent respectively against Limerick and Waterford, with Hogan’s restarts being won 56 & 64 percent of the time against Clare and Cork.
Scoring
Tipperary have averaged the scoring and concession of 2-22 per game so far. In terms of the defence, this is four points better off than last years ill-fated campaign while the forwards are averaging four points more per game, so that eight-point improvement overall on 2022 is significant.
There is interesting symmetry in that while Tipperary scored heavily in their first two games against Clare (5-22) and Cork (2-25), they also conceded big totals, but in the games against Limerick and Waterford where they were held to 0-25 and 0-21 respectively, the defence was much improved, conceding 0-25 and 1-24 compared to 3-23 and 4-19 in their first two games.
It would come as no surprise then that the number of scoring opportunities that Tipperary have created and conceded from the first two to the last two games have also dropped significantly so while Tipp have tightened up at the ball, it has cost them in terms of scoring at the other end.
Sixteen different players have contributed to the scoring effort with Gearoid O’Connor the top-scorer overall with 1-18, while Jake Morris is the leading scorer from play with 2-12 from just three games.
Tipp have averaged nine wides per game as well as conceding fourteen frees per game, but of concern will be the rising trend of the latter, starting out at seven against Clare and peaking at 15 against Waterford.