Puck-outs soar as Galway shoot on sight

The stats from Sunday’s semi-final loss to Galway will offer few crumbs of comfort for Jimmy Barry-Murphy and his management team. 

There were a couple of outstanding individual displays, with Daniel Kearney’s 27 possessions the best individual tally that we have recorded in a championship game for a hurler in 2015.

Aidan Walsh also had 21 possessions and won six puck-outs while Mark Ellis had 16 possessions. Cork also did well with their shot conversion ratio, scoring with 71% of their shots on goal.

That was where the positive news ended for Cork, however, as they were comprehensively outplayed in almost every other facet.

There was an incredible 79 pucks-outs in this game, and the chief reason for this high number was Galway’s shoot on sight policy that led to a total of 55 scoring chances for Anthony Cunningham’s side.

While Galway may have missed 25 scoring chances, eight from their talisman Joe Canning, they still managed to amass a scoring total of 2-28.

As a result of Galway’s shots total, Cork keeper Anthony Nash took a massive 52 puck-outs. And this was the first area where the Cork game-plan unravelled in Thurles. Nash failed to find his man with the first seven of his puck-outs, thus handing the momentum to Galway in the vital first 10 minutes.

Cork’s final tally of winning 26/52 of their puck-outs was poor and a lack of ball winning forwards continues to be a contributory factor for Cork’s lack of success in recent years.

You would expect to win at least a 2/3 ratio from your own puck-outs and this is one area where Cork must improve. This lack of primary possession is reflected in the possession stats of the starting Cork half-forward line from Sunday.

Pa Cronin, Bill Cooper and Brian Lawton all had just four possessions each for their time on the field while Cormac Murphy had just five before being replaced by Lorcán McLoughlin. The Kanturk man showed his value to Cork with 11 possessions in his short time on the field while Seamus Harnedy also improved matters in this area when he moved to centre forward in the latter part of the second-half.

Johnny Glynn’s performance was also a key factor. Glynn won a phenomenal nine puck-outs and caused chaos in the Cork defence.

Another area that will give the Cork management nightmares is the manner in which their players turned over possession. Cork’s final tally of 24 turnovers was another huge contributory factor to Galway’s dominance. As is usually the case, these turnovers accrued from a greater work rate by the Galway 15 who managed 76 hooks/blocks/tackles as opposed to just 53 by Cork.

This will disappoint the Cork management more than any other stat and it is an example of the type of inconsistency of performance and in particular work rate that has plagued this side throughout the year.

Galway will need to replicate that level of work rate in the semi-final against a Tipperary side who matched their tally with 77 tackles in their Munster final win over Waterford.