Turley’s appliance of science set to get the right result
A close second might be hours standing in wet shoes on the sideline around a dark Armagh pitch as your trembling fingers try to hold a biro.
Danny Turley was that soldier. The Portadown native spent the past seven years as the Orchard County’s football stats and analysis man. The process was this: stand on the sideline watching a game or training session. Make pencil marks to denote events throughout the hour — a pass, a goal, a tackle, a punch pass. Everything he could manage.
He’d then take the DVD home and do the same again but with warmer hands and dry feet. Then he’d rewind and do it again.
Rather than the county’s stars learning the valuable information he was able to glean on their first training session back after a game, say on a Tuesday, they’d instead have to wait until the Thursday.
“It basically took me 18 to 20 hours of work per game,” Turley tells me this week.
When Bertie Ahern complained about the ‘peann luaidhe’ in Irish elections — and the exciting-but-tortuous counts endured by politicians for over 24 hours subsequently, he might have had a kindred spirit in Armagh. But whereas the then Taoiseach gave Martin Cullen enough money to challenge the Russian space programme in a bid to take the pencil form the hands of the Irish electorate — and then mess it up — Turley set about the task of folding away his stationary for good. But with a lot more success.
This month, he’s already sold two — and two at a price of €600-odd — of his new iPad app.
The app — produced by his young company, Performa Sports — helps coaches and analysts to monitor and improve their team’s play while games are in progress.
“Analysis can be very time consuming unless you’re at the very top level of sport and spending thousands of pounds a year on equipment,” he says.
“We’ve developed this to be very intuitive so that you can save a lot of time and to ensure that clubs at all levels of their sport can generate data to benefit the team during and after matches.
“It’s all about getting that 3% or whatever extra. It makes the difference. My part-time job was working for Armagh on analysis but before that, I played a lot of Gaelic football. So I’ve played a lot for my club and everything else and my brother was actually a county footballer.
“It was always in our family and I always had a passion for it. And then I went on and did a university degree in the University of Ulster in what’s called interactive multimedia design. I came out with a first-class honours degree and I actually came up with the idea in my final year on placement.”
But it’s not just Gaelic football. The app has been developed to be suitable for hurling, soccer and rugby, with basketball, hockey, ice hockey and cricket versions on the way soon.
“With Performa Sports, teams can generate data that makes it easy to spot the areas of the game that can help them to win the match while it is still in progress,” he says.
Basically, to tell coaches what’s really going on. It’s like that Marx Brothers line: Who are you going to believe, me or you lying eyes? Even though the big galoot in midfield might look like he’s being effective, he’s actually lost the last four kickouts.
“Have you seen the film Moneyball at all?” Turley asks.
“I’ve read the book,” I reply, smugly, having loved Michael Lewis’ well-known work on how the Oakland A’s innovative manager, Billy Beane, used stats to overachieve.
It’s now a movie starring Brad Pitt.
“Yeah, I had the book but I never got around to seeing it,” says Turley, “But I watched the film there on Sunday and I must admit I was very impressed with it.
“It’s very, very good to watch and you can just see that by looking at analysis you can learn so much more information. There is a longer tradition in the States and we would love to get involved. but we’re hoping to use Ireland as a stepping ground, I know there’s a load of Gaelic clubs throughout the world.
“We think once we’ve established some stability the world’s our oyster.”
- contact: adrianjrussell@gmail.com Twitter: adrianrussell
