“I’M A BIT of a Stato,” admits Emmet Ryan when asked about the level of interest out there for tactical writing about Gaelic football.

“But I was thinking; surely I’m not the only one and that turned out to be the case,” he adds.

Sitting between us is the product of this hunch, Ryan’s self-published book, Tactics Not Passion, which traces the on-pitch trends throughout what was one of the most interesting football seasons in some time.

Ryan — a qualified journalist from Dublin’s south county — was prompted to pursue this labour of love to answer questions he felt were ignored in mainstream media.

“When I started it, I was basically pissed off at a Dublin game. And I know what guys have to write in papers, and that’s what I really not what I want to read tomorrow.

“So I wrote what in hindsight isn’t that great a column now;  it was about the tactics of a Dublin-Wexford game in 2010. Basically where Dublin managed to get back into it and where Wexford managed to lose it. And starting on popular message boards, it must be a year and a half ago I decided the next season would be a book.

“It started out as a collection of columns but I though I have to turn it into a story. You have to have a narrative. So I started find where is the story within each part of the season and try to build it from there. I was kind of lucky with the season I picked, I suppose. A lot of the narratives seemed to fall into place quite handily for me last year. Mayo suddenly start playing smarter. Donegal obviously was an easy one to follow. And the reasons Dublin lost was an interesting topic because the could have quite easily made an All-Ireland final but for one missed shot despite not putting together one real game in the whole season.

“I suppose the Donegal game in Croke Park was the one time Dublin looked like a complete team and even then Donegal were injury ravaged. So you’re kind of going like what’s the story here: why are they still competitive if they’re playing so badly? So you’re just looking at things like that really.

“And everything came we from there,” he says.

The book has been well received and Ryan intends to continue his tactical analyses on his blog Action81. Whether he ends up inside the velvet rope of the press box, like soccer blogger Michael Cox of Zonal Marking for example, remains to be seen. He’d certainly add something different to the narrative.

“What do I look for when I watch a match? I write a load of notes like everyone else but I just write different things I suppose. So I’m looking at where a guy hit a shot from and the pressure he’s under and things like that.

“I’m big into the American sports and college basketball is a big one for me. Even though the NBA is a better standard you see more diversity in the way teams play in college ball. It helps with the smaller teams in Gaelic football as well because you see the teams called the mid-majors; the teams who don’t have the same money or population of say the big schools so how do they compete?

“The whole thing has certainly taken off in terms of interest. I’m getting orders from Australia and New Zealand and all over the world and it’s gas to see the addresses on the things.”

Buy Tactics Not Passion here and read more at Action 81

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