Time for some ultimately meaningless by still mildly interesting sporting data, which some sports nerds would call the best kind of sporting data.
There were two moments from Saturday's woeful showing in Tbilisi that got me thinking about goalscoring statistics; Shane Duffy's first goal for the boys in green, and Aiden McGeady's introduction as a substitute.
In the case of the Brighton man I, for some reason, had imagined he already had two or three in the bag. The fact that he had a goal disallowed against Austria that I celebrated aggressively and his several close calls from set pieces were to blame for that line of thinking. As for McGeady, I couldn't believe he had reached 91 caps and I could only think of a handful of times he had managed to score.
Turns out it was 5 goals that McGeady had managed for Ireland, which got me thinking about goals to caps ratios, and here we are.
The following are the ratios of goals per caps for the Ireland squad named for the Georgia and Serbia games, not including Kevin Long, Harry Arter, David Meyler, or Conor Hourihan who have yet to register an international goal. The numbers are also rounded down or up becasuse deicimals for caps doesn't really work:
Current squad goals to caps ratio:
1 - Jonathan Walters (50 caps / 14 goals) = 1 in 4
2 - Shane Long (74 caps / 17 goals) = 1 in 4
3 - Robbie Brady (35 caps / 7 goals) = 1 in 5
4 - Cyrus Christie (12 caps / 2 goals) = 1 in 6
5 - James McClean (53 caps / 9 goals) = 1 in 6
6 - Shane Duffy (12 caps / 1 goal) = 1 in 12
7 - Wes Hoolahan (40 caps / 3 goals) = 1 in 13
8 - Ciaran Clark (25 caps / 2 goals) = 1 in 13
9 - Stephen Ward (44 caps / 3 goals) = 1 in 15
10 - Richard Keogh (17 caps / 1 goal) = 1 in 17
11 - Aiden McGeady (91 caps / 5 goals) = 1 in 18
12 - Daryl Murphy (28 caps / 1 goal) = 1 in 28
13 - Jeff Hendrick (33 caps / 1 goal) = 1 in 33
14 - John O'Shea (117 caps / 3 goals) = 1 in 39
15 - Glenn Whelan (82 caps / 2 goals) = 1 in 41
Statistics provided by FAI and accurate as of 3/9/17
Some interesting data there, especially considering Cyrus Christie's lofty position and the fact that Robbie Brady is on form to put up some seriously impressive numbers by the time his playing days come to an end. Daryl Murphy won't be thrilled with the company he is keeping though, although he's hard-done-by with sub appearances such as Saturday's in Tbilisi.
For comparison, I plucked 15 random-ish names from recent Irish football history to see how they measure up, and there were some surprising learnings there too.
Select former players goals to caps ratio:
Robbie Keane (146 caps / 68 goals) = 1 in 2
Niall Quinn (92 caps / 21 goals) = 1 in 4
Frank Stapleton (71 caps / 20 goals) = 1 in 4
Ian Harte (64 caps / 12 goals) = 1 in 5
David Connolly (41 caps / 9 goals) = 1 in 5
Roy Keane (67 caps / 9 goals) = 1 in 7
Andy Townsend (70 caps / 7 goals) = 1 in 10
Richard Dunne (80 caps / 8 goals) = 1 in 10
Paul McGrath (83 caps / 8 goals) = 1 in 10
Ray Houghton (73 caps / 6 goals) = 1 in 12
Damien Duff (100 caps / 8 goals) = 1 in 13
Steve Staunton (102 caps / 8 goals) = 1 in 13
Denis Irwin (56 caps / 4 goals) = 1 in 14
Kevin Kilbane (110 caps / 8 goals) = 1 in 14
Jason McAteer (52 caps / 3 goals) = 1 in 17
Could have sworn Duffer doubled that but the stats don't lie.
So there you have it, Cyrus Christie is currently on form to be one of Ireland's best non-striker goalscorers, while Jeff Hendrick needs to bag a few to avoid having a strike-rate similar to Glenn Whelan in a few years.
