Opposition Analysis, a basic introduction

As teams progress and develop they will want to use analysis to create insights and also advantages. To identify and create advantages in specific games a level of opposition analysis is required. We can use analysis to break down the opposition and identify weaknesses that could be exploited by our team. Opposition analysis although common practice is not without its' controversy. We only have to look at the recent 'Sign Stealing' scandal by the Houston Astro's in Baseball where opposition analysis crossed the line into cheating. In a GAA context, you are unlikely to get permission to film future opponents. However, there is a lot we can do without crossing the line. In this blog post, we'll outline some practical tips and offer some advice for conducting opposition analysis at any level of the GAA.

Basic Research

There is no excuse in the world of Social Media, not to know who you are playing against. A cursory search of an opposition’s social media pages or a local newspaper will give you a team list and usually the score tally for the team. If you collect this data throughout the year you will be able to identify who are the ever-present pillars of the team, who is the free-taker and who are the main scoring threats. If you see a free-taker scoring several 45’s you can assume that their free taking range is extensive. On the flip side, if over a couple of games you notice a team have multiple frees scored against it you could conclude that they tend to concede scorable frees, an avenue that could potentially be exploited.

This is the most basic way of researching the team and is limited in what it can tell us, however, these small nuggets of information can be useful when it comes to taking on the opposition that we are researching.

Scouting Analysis

A way of getting more detail on the opposition is to conduct a scouting mission and go and watch them play. In doing so we can see first hand not only who is playing but which players are the most influential on the pitch beyond those who score. Who is their designated man marker? How do they transition from defence to attack?

When going to scout an opposition it is important to get the most out of the game. Relying on recall alone if we are willing to analyse our opposition’s games should not be regarded as enough scouting especially if we are going to the effort of attending opposition games. If attending the games I would recommend attending in a pair or a group of including your performance analyst and at least one other member of the management team.

The analyst could stat the game as if they were stating their own team creating data that could be compared to our own and a more detailed assessment of the opposition. If this is done over a collection of games then there will be a sizable dataset to assess the team in even more detail as we will be able to identify trends. If you don't want to conduct full match analysis you could bring a small book track scorers and make any notes of trends or tactics that you can see.

If we only have one game of data we must consider who our rival was playing and how they adapted to this team. We can learn from how their opposition plays and if that exposed a weakness that we can use Thus it is important to assess both the rival who we are studying and their opponent. Every game no matter who is playing is an opportunity to learn about both sides and should be treated as so.

An example of this in use could be that we have identified that we are dominant in the air with our midfielders and win contested kick outs the majority of the time regardless of which team is kicking it. We will then want to examine where the opposition likes to kick the ball to see if we will be able to exert this dominance over the opposition. However, at games, we may see that they are adept to short kick-outs and may require a man to man or zonal press rather than dropping off in hope for the longer kick-outs.

Focussed Analysis

We will want to see how the opposition stacks up against our team and performances therefore we may take a more focused approach to examining an opposition team. To do this we can highlight 2 or 3 of our key strengths and weaknesses and create KPI’s around these. The reality is that we will most likely have created these KPI’s already to analyse our game. Then using these targeted KPI’s we can analyse how the opposition performs specifically concerning our strengths and weaknesses.

For example, our free-taker has an 80% conversion rate and thus we tend to have an advantage against teams that foul. When scouting the opposition’s foul count is important to us especially the fouls in the scoring zone to help us see if we will be able to take advantage of their lack of discipline. Another example might be our weakness to shoot from the right side of the pitch so we will want to identify how they defend our preferred left side of the pitch to see if we will run into issues when going forward.

Live Comparisons

Live comparisons involve comparing the rival while we are playing them. This might require a second analyst to focus on the opposition while some analyst may be able to capture data for their team and their opposition. In doing so we can see live trends and how they are adjusting to play against us and how we can adjust to play against them. We can compare the two teams to identify mismatches and reveal where the competitive advantage can be leveraged. This might be forcing them to a certain side of the pitch for shooting or double marking a midfielder for kick-outs. Either way by comparing both teams in a live scenario we can see blow for blow where each team is favoured and where we can create an advantage for ourselves.

We hope that this outline is helpful to you and your team. We recognise that with the season postponed indefinitely with the current pandemic can be frustrating for everyone, but please stay at home where you can, take appropriate precautions and stay safe. If you wish for us to cover any particular topics on our blog let us know here and we'll try to post more content about what intrigues our readers.