Goals Per Game

After posting Stephen Ireland's international record on his 31st birthday in August, one of our facebook followers asked if he had the best goals per game ratio, and if not then which Irish player has that record?

Happy birthday Stephen Ireland(6 caps, 4 goals), 31 today! 🎂 #COYBIG pic.twitter.com/IYFVUYDSoj

— Irish Abroad (@irish_abroad) August 22, 2017

Former Bohemians striker Jimmy White scored twice in his single appearance for the Republic of Ireland, which is the best ratio of any player ever to pull on the green jersey. There are four players who scored on their only appearance for the Boys in Green - Jack Sullivan, Johnny Squires, Paddy Bermingham, and Jimmy McCann - giving them a perfect record of one goal per game. Tom Davis and Matty Geoghegan both finished their international careers with a ratio of one goal per game after matching their appearance total of four and two caps, respectively,  with the number of goals scored in each.

Looking at players with five (or more) caps, Ringsend striker Jimmy Dunne scored 13 goals in his 15 appearances, finishing his international career on 0.87 goals per game.

Player	Goals	Caps	Goals/Games Ratio
Jimmy Dunne	13	15	0.87
John Joe Flood	4	5	0.80
Paddy Bradshaw	4	5	0.80
Paddy Moore	7	9	0.78
Stephen Ireland	4	6	0.67

The only goal of David O'Leary's career, a strike against Turkey in 1990 (his penalty against Romania is not counted), means he has the worst goals/game ratio of all players who have scored at least one goal for Ireland, scoring only 0.014 goals in each of his 68 caps.

Shay Given's 134 caps is (unsurprisingly) the highest caps total without a single goal and Kenny Cunningham's 72 caps is the highest total of the outfield players to retire without scoring