The Ballintubber corner-forward is Mayo’s go-to man for a reason.
Many observers were surprised to learn that the All-Star awarded to Cillian O’Connor last Friday night was the first of his inter-county career to date. Despite the fact that he’s only 22, O’Connor seems to have been around for years and having already won two Young Footballer of the Year awards, one would nearly have assumed that he had picked up an All-Star along the way.
O’Connor doesn’t need an All-Star to illustrate just how good a player he is; he’s delivered any amount of top quality performances in green and red in the last few years and while he’s very effective from play, his dead ball stats make for seriously impressive reading.
James Robinson, the man behind the excellent @dontfoul account on Twitter, posted some statistical graphs on his blog in recent days illustrating just how good a free-taker O’Connor is and the easy conclusion to reach is that you don’t want to give away easy frees against Mayo when O’Connor is on the pitch.
O’Connor is the most successful of the ten players to have had most attempts from frees in TV championship games between 2012 and 2014, an achievement that’s all the more significant considering that he’s attempted more shots than anybody else, many of which were high-pressure situations in really big games.
The stats on dontfoul also prove that O’Connor is adept at converting frees that aren’t particularly easy; for example, his success rate at frees between 20 and 45 metres is 86% and it is only when he attempts frees from outside the 45 metre line that he begins to get into difficulty.
x=missed, disc=score, black=free, white=45
One of the standout aspects of the analysis of O’Connor is that he missed only two frees from inside 40 metres in the 2014 Championship and one of those was a last-ditch attempt at a goal in the dying seconds of extra-time against Kerry in the All-Ireland semi-final replay in Limerick.
As we said, O’Connor barely needs stats to prove what a good player he is, but based on this data, is there a better free-taker in the country?
Hat-tip to James Robinson for his help with this; if you’re a GAA fan and don’t already follow him @dontfoul, you should do so immediately
