Crossmaglen vs Silverbridge Statistical Report
Crossmaglen were expected to find themselves in the quarter finals with the minimum of fuss and that’s how the game played out last weekend. It’s usually the Crossmaglen attack that takes all the credit for their victories, but in their 1-15 to 0-7 win over their neighbours Silverbridge on Sunday afternoon; it was their defensive game that deserves recognition.
Crossmaglen’s defence used Silverbridge’s inability to retain possession from their own attacks against them. This gave Cross the fuel to counter attack and with The Rangers completing several turnovers across the 60 minutes, this ultimately was the main factor in deciding the outcome of the game.
The victors achieved a turnover rate of 65% (turning over 30 of Silverbridge’s total 46 possession), the highest turnover rate of all eight teams on show at the weekend, while hitting 10 of their 16 scores on the counter attack. Rico Kelly and Callum Cumiskey deservingly made The Sideline Eye TEAM OF THE WEEK as is was in their defence that Cross attained most of their turnovers.
Silverbridge attacked the Crossmaglen defence 35 times throughout the duration of the contest and on 19 occasions the Cross defence came storming back out with the ball, and Cross were able to hit their opponents on the break time and time again, as the graph above shows the source of the majority of Crossmaglen’s scores came from possession changing hands.
After ten minutes of action Cross had held Silverbridge to just a single point while putting their forwards under serious pressure, turning over 5 of the 8 (63%) Silverbridge attacks during this time. Cross won the game in the 20 minutes after half time when they held Silverbridge scoreless while reeling off eight unanswered points.
As shown in the graph above 58% of Cross’ defensive turnovers came in that middle section of their defence where they were able to cut off space and deny the Silverbridge forward line any space to get decent shots away, Cumiskey and Kelly deserve huge credit for this. They held the Silverbridge attack to a 39% shot accuracy, scoring just 7 times from their 18 shots.
The Rangers turnover rate in the middle of the field was also good and their hardworking half forward of Colin O’Connor, Oisin O’Neill and Stephen Morris all gave a helping hand in this section of the pitch. The graph above indicts that 30% of Crossmaglen’s turnover came in that middle third while they also got 2 turnovers in their forward line.
Maghery vs St Patrick’s Statistical Report
This game could have went either way and with 10 minutes of action remaining it was unclear who was going to grab the final semi final spot, but it was Brian Fox who grabbed all the headlines with his awesome goal with the last score of the game allowing Maghery to qualify for the next round.
Heading into the contest, the anticipating crowd expected a war for primary possession in the middle of the field and that’s exactly what they got. As the graph below shows, Maghery dominated their own kick outs while gaining just under half of all Cullyhanna kick outs, meaning they captured 62% of the 32 kick outs in the game.
Both keepers opted to kick the ball long to the middle third and only 9 of the 32 kick out were taken short, with both teams enjoying a 100% return from their short kick outs (Maghery 6/6, St Patrick’s 3/3). St Pat’s had great success from their own kick outs during the opening exchanges, winning 4/5 but Maghery began to get a foothold in the centre of the park.
After 20 minutes of action Brian McIllmurray’s goal had Maghery ahead 1-2 to 0-3 with both teams only losing one of their respective kick outs. But in the final 10 minutes of the opening period Maghery really pressed hard on the Cullyhanna restarts, winning 60% of their kick outs and recording 0-1 of their 0-3 in this period from the St Pat’s restarts.
By the half time mark Maghery had taken possession 9 times from the 16 kick outs taken while hitting 0-2 of their 1-5 from winning primary possession. Maghery continued to use their full court press on Cullyhanna kick outs and this led to Maghery dominating the opening moments of the second half.
Like the first half Maghery lost just one of their own kick outs while capturing possession from the opposition restarts 4/8 times while retaining 6/7 of their own with 3 of their 5 scores in the second half coming from kick outs. All in all Maghery’s dominance of their own restarts along with pressing hard on Cullyhanna’s allowed them to gain more possession and ultimately win the game.
