[ Background in football ]

I've always had an interest in football. As a youth, I was a goalkeeper and ended up representing my county but never played at a higher level. At the end of every season, there was a regional tournament between the six counties in Northern Ireland plus a couple of teams from Belfast. I played with some decent players - and against some decent players as well. The most famous player I played against being Norman Whiteside. It was an under-17 tournament, I was 17 and he was 13 and he was just phenomenal. He was already on Manchester United’s books, everybody could see what a good player he was - and 3 years later, he was in the first team and playing in the World Cup.

Although that’s always your ambition, I knew from a young age that I wasn’t actually a good enough player to make a career in the game. I eventually became a nurse for people with learning disabilities. I continued to play football in England and ran a Sunday league team for 25 years, playing 11-a-side until I was 54 or 55. I’m suffering for it now though!

[ How did you get involved with statistics? ]

I always had the ambition to produce a statistical book in Northern Ireland - like Rothmans Yearbook and I’d been working on it in my spare time alongside my full time work. I ended up doing 12 or 13 of these yearbooks over the years. Then, in 1997, after 17 years as a nurse, I took redundancy.

I wanted to get into football, and having that experience behind me along with some contacts in the newspaper industry in Northern Ireland I managed to get a few opportunities. At the time it was quite hard because I was doing everything freelance.

I ended up doing a column with a major newspaper in Northern Ireland - the Belfast Telegraph - every Friday night where I would preview the Irish League games. That was my first real ‘break’.

I’d always had an interest in keeping statistics. At a young age, I would write down the lineups and goalscorers for the teams I played for. I’ve still got the full record of games I played going back to when I was 13 years of age!

[ These yearbooks, were these ‘commissioned’ or done in collaboration with a newspaper or was this just something you were doing on your own? ]

For the first three years, I produced it and paid for it all myself. I didn’t have any financial backers at all, I sourced the printers and typesetters and paid for it all to get printed. It was just something I wanted to do - and it eventually became quite popular.

After the third year, a TV station in Northern Ireland, called Ulster Television, decided that it was a good publication and decided to sponsor me. On the back of that, I was able to get a publisher, we had launches in Belfast and it sort of took off from there. It became a lot more of a professional production as well, advertising was sourced, I had more help from clubs and all of that helped my name get out there a bit.

[ This led to a lot of interesting opportunities, can you share a little about some of the roles you’ve had since then? ]

Like I mentioned, I had that column for the Belfast Telegraph and then the Daily Mirror asked me to work with them as well. So I started freelancing with various newspapers and different companies sponsoring the Irish League. For example, companies like Nationwide Building Society would publish various articles about Northern Irish football on their websites and I’d provide stats, match reports and photographs.

I started sourcing statistics for newspapers and publications like Kicker’s yearbook in Germany. I had a good friend Ulrich Matheja who worked for Kicker and he got me involved in that. Later, I contributed stats to the Italian yearbook Annuario del Calcio Mondiale and also to Rothmans So I was doing various things and had my fingers in a lot of pies.

I also started working for the Irish Football Association in 2004. A colleague at the Belfast Telegraph, Steven Beacom, was talking to the Northern Ireland manager at the time - Lawrie Sanchez - Lawrie was looking for someone to provide statistics. Steven said, ‘I know the very guy to do it!’. He put me in touch with him and I started working for Lawrie, providing stats for him on a weekly basis. I’ve now been doing that for the last 21 years for every successive Northern Ireland manager.

A little after I started with the Irish FA, Scout7 came along - they were a scouting company based in Birmingham, that was later taken over by Opta. I worked for Scout7 for 10 years, looking after their UK databases. That was quite intense but it was a ‘regular job’ and regular money.

At the start, it was difficult to get work but once I was in the industry for a few years and my reputation improved, people started coming to me. I was always behind the scenes, going from newspapers and yearbooks to Scout7 and the Irish FA.

[ What does ‘sourcing statistics’ actually mean? Do you get an ‘assignment’ for specific stats you need to track down? ]

I have a database of records from 1985, so I’ve got 40 years worth of records of Irish League football - I keep a record of every game that has been played, with lineups, goal scorers and in more recent years areas like assists, how the goals are scored and so on.

People within the games are actually coming to me now and want access to this information. For example, a couple of days ago, a guy doing a podcast, he’s got an ex-player from the ‘90s coming on and he asked me for stats on his career. I’ll have how many games he played for particular clubs, how many trophies he’s won, that sort of thing. So, while I’m sourcing statistics to a degree, a lot of my work is compiling it in a way others can use.

A lot of what I have is probably quite unique, especially for the Northern Ireland national team, I’ve got a huge amount of information on them. Something I did a few years ago, which nobody else has, is actually detailing every goal that Northern Ireland has scored since 1882. Everything from who scored the goal, what club they were playing for, how old they were, the ground the game was played at, who the referee was - I’ve got this for every single goal. Now, I’m trying to add in assists too - which is a little bit more difficult - but nobody else to my knowledge has this information.

Because I have all this information complete I can now, at the touch of a button, tell you things like the last Stoke City player to score for Northern Ireland was Sammy McIlroy against Scotland in December 1983. People seem to like that kind of information.

[ How do you verify these stats, especially the older ones? Is there a way to ‘prove’ your database is accurate? ]

When I’m checking records, I use at least three or four different sources. I’ll also look at newspapers from the time, which tend to be a good source of information. I subscribe to the British Newspaper Archive which has a huge database of newspapers going back years - and I’ll check three or four of these for match reports.

A lot of people like to use Wikipedia or just check one source - and some websites are very good, but sometimes mistakes will be copied! Even if I see something on the internet 10 times, I’ll still be dubious until I double check it myself. I’ve verified different games for Northern Ireland over the years which were classed as official internationals but have since been confirmed by FIFA or UEFA as boda fida internationals. So, I’m very meticulous in my work - sometimes too meticulous because I can spend a couple of hours just getting one stat but by the end, you get a satisfaction that everything’s complete.

[ I imagine there are a lot more possibilities - especially on the tech side - than when you first started, how has your process changed over the years? ]

When I started compiling stats, everything was handwritten. My stats were all handwritten from 1985 up to the early 2000s! Of course, since then I’ve started putting everything onto the computer. I’ve been using a simple, free program called LTrack for years and it provides me with everything I need.

For example, Linfield are playing Shelbourne in the Champions League qualifiers on the 9th of July, I’ve been asked to provide stats for that. I’m in the process of completing every game Linfield has played in Europe - which is 143 - and adding every lineup, goal, assist and booking. Once I have that together, I’m able to generate whatever stats I want out of it.

This kind of assignment is a big part of my work at the minute. I work on a freelance basis with the BBC, Sky and different TV and media companies to provide statistics on Northern Ireland or Irish League football for different matches.

[ Do you still watch a lot of football? ]

Believe it or not, I don't watch so many games live. I don’t watch the Premier League on TV much these days but I’ll still watch the Irish League games and maybe some lower league, Championship or League One games in England but those are mostly just on in the background while I work.

I like to watch football live as and when I can. It doesn't matter what level, whether it's my local team here, or if I get the time, I’ll go to Southampton nearby.

The only games I never miss are Northern Ireland matches in Belfast. I’ve been away (in England) since 1987 and I think I haven’t missed one in Belfast since April 1996. The last international against Iceland at Windsor Park in June was my 119th consecutive Northern Ireland game in Belfast! It does cost me a small fortune in flights! I now attend internationals as a member of the IFA media team as I write for the match programme and also work for the Irish FA website, writing the odd article and keeping their player profiles up to date.

[ Are you in touch with researchers and statisticians who are doing this for different clubs or national teams? Is there a community of people doing this or is it more of a ‘solo’ profession? ]

It's a bit of both, really. There are a couple of guys in Northern Ireland who like their statistics as well, and we are sort of in contact with each other, and we'll double check and help each other out.

There used to be an organization called the Association of Football Statisticians, which was huge back in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. It was basically a group of people who were really interested in their stats, whether it be at non league level, international level or just for their particular club. I’ve still got contacts from those days and we sometimes pass information back and forth between us.

Now, lots more is happening online of course. For example, the other day, a Leeds United statistician contacted me via Twitter. They wanted some information on Northern Ireland players and I also corrected a few stats they had. I’m quite free to pass things on like that, I don’t charge any money for that - people have helped me out in the past and it’s just a nice way of meeting and connecting with like-minded people.

[ Do you think jobs like yours are at risk of being replaced by Opta - or similar companies - that compile tons of stats? ]

I think these big companies like Opta, look at stats in a different way - you know, how far a player runs, expected goals etc.. I’m not into that, to be honest, I’m more into stats that are real! Stats like how many appearances so and so has made or, ‘Conor Bradley is the first player from Liverpool to play for Northern Ireland since such and such date in the ‘20s’, that type of thing. Those are the kind of stats that interest me.

I think the journalists that I work with prefer the stats I can provide. Something with a bit of meat on it.

Still, I think I’ve been lucky in making a career out of this for the last 28 years. I’ve got a niche market where nobody else has this information which I’ve built up over the past four decades. I’ve worked hard to get to a position where thankfully I have plenty of work (touch wood), though nobody actually sees the amount of hours that I put into keeping these stats up to date.

And there are always things to be doing. Believe it or not, this is one of my busiest periods of the season. Getting everything ready for the new campaign ahead. I’m trying to be innovative and do something new and fresh as well, I like to have new stats out there. But to do that, you have to put the work into it.

There is room for new people to come along and work in statistics. As I said, there are lots of people out there compiling their own stats and collaborating. I’m always prepared to help and advise people if they ever want it.

[ What do you do for the Irish FA? ]

Twice a week I provide a spreadsheet detailing every Northern Ireland player who has played over the weekend in England, Scotland, Netherlands, Australia or wherever. I will actually detail who they played against, how many minutes they played, whether they scored, and so on. In another tab, I put their season stats and things like how many minutes they’ve played in that particular month and if they’ve been out through injury. I do this for the senior players and the U21, U19 and U17 teams too.

I send that information out to all the various international managers/coaches. Managers and coaches are busy - and a lot of the time they know this information - but one of my roles is to provide this for them so it’s centralized and readily available. Hopefully, it makes life a little bit easier. I send this spreadsheet out on a Monday morning which covers all the weekend action and also on a Friday afternoon for all the games played during the week.

I also provide similar information weekly for players plying their trade at U21 & U18 level.

One of my other roles with the Association is looking at eligibility within our academy setup. Sometimes I get tip offs from people saying a certain individual is eligible to play for Northern Ireland, I pass that on to the coaches and add them to my spreadsheet to keep track of them. So we can keep track of the paperwork.

[ Are you also compiling stats on women's football? ]

Yes, over the last 18 months or so, I’ve also been concentrating on women’s football. I’ve been providing our senior women’s manager Tanya Oxtoby with the exact same reports as I do for the men.

However, stats on women’s football have been pretty poor down through the years. Like many associations around the world, the IFA struggled for definitive records on matches and caps won by players. Therefore, over a period of six months, I retraced every game that the women’s senior team has played since 2005 and provided data for each individual player. It was a lot of work and there are still a few gaps but it’s as good as anybody is going to get because the information simply doesn’t exist.

[ I saw one of your recent posts sharing - ‘Isaac Price’s winner against Iceland makes him the youngest player to score 9 goals for Northern Ireland’ - is this just a ‘cherry picked’ stat? Do people actually care about the fastest to score nine goals? ]

That’s my weird brain probably. That came in our last game, I was sitting beside the radio guys and the TV guys who were commentating the game live. Isaac Price scores and I knew it was his 9th goal and I had the spreadsheet there and just thought, 9 goals, he’s still only 21, the only other player in my mind who might have matched that would have been Norman Whiteside. So, I checked and he was actually the youngest. So, I passed the information on to the media guys and they were able to use that immediately. That’s one of the things I do, it just sort of comes to me, there’s no real rhyme or reason.

When we beat Bulgaria 5-nil and Isaac Price scored a hat trick, people were coming up to me and asking, ‘is he the youngest to score a hat trick?’ or, ‘how many hat tricks have been scored at Windsor Park?’. I was getting so many text messages and I was trying to watch the game but I had everything in front of me and thankfully I was able to provide the answers. I think that game was one of the busiest I’ve ever been, getting inquiries left, right and centre - it doesn’t happen often that Northern Ireland win 5-0!

It’s just something you have to sometimes think outside the box and think about what’s going to be interesting to others because what I find interesting might be quite boring to someone else. But I also get all kinds of queries, people ask me weird and wonderful things.

[ Do you prepare stats that might happen before the match too? - e.g. if X comes on, they’ll be the first player since Y to do something. ]

That’s one of my main roles. It’s for the commentators - when they're commentating a match, they need to have those facts. What I do is prepare four or five little stats on every player in the squad - things like ‘if Ronan Hale makes his debut, he’ll become the 768th player to play for Northern Ireland’ so the commentators have that information at their fingertips.

I’ve worked with a lot of the commentators for years and I know what kinds of stats interest each commentator and which ones they wouldn’t use. For an international match, I probably do about 14 pages of stats covering the team, the opposition and everything around the game. However, probably less than 10% will be used, but it’s there just in case.