Episode 4 - Youngest Competitive Starts - Chapter 1 - NodeJS

In the first of a three-part episode in our programming tutorial series, I use nodeJS to show how to prove that Evan Ferguson's start against France in March 2023 made him the third youngest player to start a competitive game for the Republic of Ireland

Episode 3 - Average Age and Debuts

In the third in our series of programming tutorials, framed around appearance data for the Republic of Ireland national men's team, I show how to prove that the average age of the starting XI named by Stephen Kenny to face Scotland in September 2022 had the youngest average age of any side in a competitive international since a World Cup qualifier against Cyprus in November 1980, and that, following Mark Sykes' debut against Malta, Kenny has given as many players their debuts in his 30 games in charge as Brian Kerr did in his 33 games managing the national side

Github Repository

Data, stats, and tutorials

For a little while now, I've been thinking of creating a tutorial on how the stats posted on the account are generated. 

Having curated data on Irish international and club football since 2006, there's a wealth of information available to mine statistics from.

With that in mind, I've created a GitHub account to make the raw data publicly available, and have started a YouTube account to explain the stats. Be warned - this is not a beginner's programming tutorial. A level of technical knowledge is assumed. But I have tried to make it as accessible as possible for anyone without development experience.

The first and second episodes are available online now.

Episode 1 introduces the data, how it is stored in JSON files, and accessed using NodeJs

Episode 2 explains how three stats were compiled

• That Stephen Kenny is the first Ireland manager to lose two games to teams ranked outside the top 90
• That the winning margin against Scotland was the largest against a higher ranked side in a competitive game since rankings were introduced
• That Alan Browne's goal against Belgium was the fastest by a substitute since James Collins V Serbia 

This is something different for me. While I have some minor video editing experience, I've never worked on anything on this scale, so bear with me while I learn how video editing works.

There's no formal schedule for how often these videos will be published, but I'm aiming for once a month, with two stats explained in each tutorial.

Have fun!