Steven Poacher: Turnovers are the key

THE long-awaited return of intercounty football happened last weekend and it was really enjoyable to be able to sit down on Sunday evening and watch The Sunday Game and catch up with all the league highlights and major talking points.

I am extremely privileged to be involved in a coaching role with Roscommon’s seniors this season, working with Anthony Cunningham and his management team, and we faced off against All-Ireland champions Dublin on Sunday past.

One of the major talking points from the game, and indeed from other games over the weekend, was the introduction of the new rule of a penalty awarded if denying a clear goal-scoring opportunity.

We had an astonishing three given against us, including two black cards in incidences that could be debated over whether they were penalties or not.

It does fill me with a little worry that teams and players over the next few weeks may try and exploit the rule with the possibility of simulation and added pressure on an already demanding job for our referees.

Having watched quite a large number of games back, including my own county Down take on Mayo on Saturday past, rules or no new rules there is still one abiding feature that dictates the vast majority of games and that is the key word – turnovers.

Turnovers occur when you have possession and someone tackles you legitimately and takes the ball off you, or when you have possession and you give it away because of pressure being put on you.

The fact of the matter still remains, and was very evident over the weekend, that the team who wins the game will have significantly more turnovers than the losing team. Your ability to turn the opposition team over successfully will have a huge bearing on your success.

A really effective team who turn the ball over will create a scoring chance within those next six to 10 seconds, depending on where they turn the ball over on the field and you could see evidence of that in particularly Mayo, Donegal and Kerry’s play over the weekend.

Gaelic football is ever evolving tactically with innovations in our game circulating regularly and being copycatted at club level across the country, but one thing still remains firm – I believe over 50 percent of total scores come from turnovers in a game. Clearly it should be a massive tactical focus for all clubs.

I would love to see the exact statistics in Gaelic football of the amount of scores that emerge from turnovers – I believe it would be well over 50 percent. Imagine conceding 3-15 in your next league game and you score 1-12, but in 15 of your attacks, you were turned over eight times and the opposition scored 2-6 from those eight attacks. Most of us will blame the defending when we should be focusing in on not getting the ball turned over as cheaply.

A lot of teams in Gaelic football at the highest level know that when the ball is in an attacking position for their team, they will have four or five players preparing to set up in a good defensive position. They do this in case possession is lost while attacking.

If they go on and score great, but if the opposition win the ball back, usually all the main avenues of exit for them can be blocked or even diverted to a certain channel. They are able to keep the ball in their attacking half or better still win it back there and score straight away. Dublin are the kingpins of it. Pep and Klopp in soccer have prepared and coached a very similar style, viewing the transition from attack to defence as important as defence to attack.

This is where I think GAA teams need to go from a coaching perspective. Don’t wait until the moment of transition until you startcharging towards your own goal trying to win the ball back., Instead, already have your foundations of defence in place.

A few instructions to a few players in certain positions will help get this going.

When coaching ‘defending the counter attack’, a few designated defenders can be told to set up in certain attacking positions to make the transition from defence to attack swifter. That gives an under prepared opposition less time to protect their own goal when they lost possession.

The key to transition football is turnovers so the most important part of it is not giving the ball away.

Obviously the quicker you move the ball when a turnover occurs the more likely you are to score. And of course you must generate turnovers through tackling, intercepting and forcing mistakes from the opposition.