"Goals win games" is a well-known staple of football analysis.
But the goals of Patrick Hoban this season have not just won games for Dundalk; they have also helped comfortably claim the league title, mainly as for his 29 league goals, 28 were scored in wins, covering 20 of their 27 victorious matches.
His season will go down as one of the all-time best in the history of the league. He is an injury doubt for Dundalk in this Sunday's FAI Cup final and the impact it could have on Dundalk is massive.
On sheer numbers this has been the highest scoring season by a player in modern times. But is it the best?
Given the changes in how football has been played and the league structured over the past 100 years, that question is impossible to answer.
Analysis of whether it is the best of the modern era, the 15 years of summer football, is, if still unanswerable, worth looking at.
We isolated some other the other best seasons when large amounts of goals were scored at an efficient rate to examine.
Jason Byrne scored 25 in 33 games in 2004, Gary Twigg scored 22 in 26 in 2012, Richie Towell scored 25 in 32 in 2005 and Sean Maguire scored 20 in 21 in his abridged 2017 season.
GOAL - Patrick Hoban equals Brendan Bradley's record of 29 league goals in a season as @dundalkfc lead @sligorovers 5-0 pic.twitter.com/OvuNgvBQZE
— Soccer Republic (@SoccRepublic) October 19, 2018
Byrne has many great seasons and is undoubtedly on the League of Ireland scoring Mount Rushmore.
His four years with Shelbourne saw him top the charts on his own each year, the only player to do so for four years in a row.
He left for Cardiff with an incredible 83 goals in 120 starts, helping Shels to three league titles in four years, and the top scoring team over that time.
Twigg had four great scoring campaigns and any could be chosen. His goals helped Shamrock Rovers to league titles in 2010 and 2011 while he hit most (24) in 2009.
But his best ratio came in 2012. That’s not to mention his role in bringing success back to the Hoops for the first time in 15 years.
His four-year stay ended with a record similar to Byrne’s at Shelbourne – 81 goals from 111 starts. Hoban’s record across his two spells at Dundalk is slightly better – 63 from 87.
Another player who had an outstanding 2012 was Danny North, he had 14 goals in 16 games for Sligo Rovers before injury ended his season, but without the same goal volume of the above it is hard to put it in the same bracket.
Towell elevated his scoring from 18 in his first two seasons to a remarkable 25 from midfield in 2015.
He was a part of a Dundalk team that dominated the league that year with a knack for scoring key goals.
That included four in three league games against Cork and the FAI Cup final extra-time winner against them too.
Maguire built on a good 2016 to send Cork clear at the top of the table with two-thirds of the next season played.
It earned him a move to the EFL Championship and was instrumental in moving the league title south with a famous hat-trick at Oriel Park signifying a shift in power between the rivals.
Returning to the club he had made his name at for 2018 there would have been doubts about whether he could immediately re-capture his best form. He went beyond expectations as part of a team that has scored more goals than any other in league history.
One of Hoban’s key abilities this year has been his availability. He has started 35 consecutive games since being a sub for the opening night scoreless draw with Bray Wanderers.
The only other outfield players to do this have been Simon Madden, Lee Desmond and team-mate Michael Duffy.
Helping him to do this has been the fact that he has been substituted 21 times – three more than the next-most in the league Graham Cummins and Jake Keegan.
Allowing him the rest when a healthy lead has already been established keeping his workload manageable.
Starting this number of games, in a longer season, has helped Hoban register his high goal tally.
Number of league starts:
- Hoban – 35
- Byrne - 33
- Towell – 32
- Twigg – 26
- Maguire – 21
No other team this year comes as close to Dundalk in being reliant on their main scorer. He has accounted for 34% of their goals. Closest to that is Graham Burke with 23% of Shamrock Rovers’ goals and Kieran Sadlier scoring 23% for Cork City. In the only game not started by Hoban,
Dundalk drew a blank at home to the worst defensive team in the league – Bray Wanderers. The same is true of Towell while Cork’s goal-scoring dropped significantly from 2.71 per game to 0.83 after the departure of Maguire.
Number of goals in his team for a season:
- Byrne – 44%
- Twigg – 39%
- Hoban – 34%
- Towell - 32%
- Maguire - 30% (35% at time of departure)
Hoban and Byrne are the only on the list who scored against all other teams in the league showing that no team had the formula to stop them.
Though it should be noted that Towell and Maguire had more teams to score against and the latter only failed to score against Bohemians who he only played once.
Hoban scored a high proportion of his goals in home games while Byrne impressively scored more away than at Tolka Park.
Goals at home vs away:
- Byrne – 44%/56%
- Maguire – 55%/45%
- Towell – 56%/44%
- Twigg – 59%/41%
- Hoban – 63%/37%
Seven times Hoban has scored more than once in a game which includes one hat-trick. Only Aaron McEneff (three times) has scored multiple goals in more than two games in 2018.
These were not just cases of adding goals in big wins. Two in a home game with Sligo Rovers (one an 89th minute winner) was the difference in a 2-1 win and also in a 3-1 victory on the road to St. Pat’s.
Games with more than one goal scored:
- Hoban – 7
- Twigg – 7
- Maguire – 5
- Towell – 5
- Byrne – 4
Hoban’s goal mountain has been aided by his consistency – only once did he go on a run of three games without a goal.
Maguire never went more than two games showing how likely it was that had he finished the season he could have continued on towards 30.
As mentioned above all but one of Hoban’s goals have led to Dundalk wins though Maguire went one better with a 100% record.
Wins when scoring:
- Maguire – 100%
- Hoban – 97%
- Twigg – 82%
- Byrne – 80%
- Towell – 80%
Finally, it is interesting to strip out the goals scored by the players and how many points would have been lost by the team without them.
As Dundalk have won 18 games by more than one goal they would have still won most games without his goals.
The contrast to the effect of Byrne’s goals on Shelbourne’s points is representative of the changed nature of the league with the difference between the leading teams and the rest much wider.
How many points would have been lost by the team without their talisman:
- Byrne – 23
- Towell – 18
- Twigg – 16
- Maguire – 13
- Hoban – 12
It was remarkable for Hoban to have such a scoring impact on his return to the League of Ireland having only notched seven goals in his two-and-a-half years in the English lower leagues.
It is worth noting that, somewhat bizarrely to those who have seen him play at home, managers did not view him as a leading scorer.
Upon signing with his second club, Mansfield Town, he said: "He’s (manager Adam Murray) not putting too much pressure on me to score goals as he wants me to be more of a ‘platform player’. I like to think I can hold up the ball quite well and bring others into play and keep the ball in the final third for long periods of time."
That was echoed by manager Adam Murray: "Pat is an all-round centre-forward. His hold up play and link up play is exceptional for this level of football. We're not bringing him in to rely on his goals. He has got goals in him and if he does score goals, brilliant, but his overall game is as valuable as someone who scores 15 or 20 goals."
Hoban started quite well with Mansfield scoring a few goals early but he was generally in the role of doing the dirty work and winning headers for pacier strike-partner Matt Green who led the team in scoring.
A change in manager to Steve Evans in November led to him losing his place in the team and he would be released at the end of the season.
At Dundalk, Hoban plays as a lone striker but in the U.K. he had to adjust to playing with a partner who he would have to do a lot of the dirty, physical work for. That adjustment is something Hoban wasn’t able to make without a reduction in scoring.
Michael Appleton saw similar traits when he first brought him to England for Oxford United: "He is a goalscorer, but he is also a strong lad, he brings other people into the game." His strike partner there, Danny Hylton, had 14 goals.
Players can often get pigeon-holed and Hoban’s managers in England viewed him more as a support striker to create chances for others rather than the focal point of their scoring attack.
He has shown this strength to his game notably in the key winning goal away to Cork City and spoke of feeling physically stronger with a better ability in holding the ball up.
But it has been his finishing that has shone in a system that does not often require him to spend large amounts of time holding the ball up for others as the team build from the back and surround him with other attackers who are quick and comfortable holding the ball.
Six of his 2018 goals have been scored with his head, while 18 were on his right side and three from his left.
His total also includes three from outside the box, showing a versatile scorer.
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The question of which season is best among the five under our microscope is tough to answer, they were all played in different seasons and with different teams.
Byrne’s was at the peak of his run in a lower-scoring league, Twigg had his best year in a team far off contending for the league, Towell managing his volume from a midfield position is unprecedented while the rate that Maguire was scoring could have seen him surpass Hoban’s 29 had he finished the season.
But on the cold hard facts of goal volume, Hoban has gone past the others by a comfortable margin.
It’s not Hoban’s first great scoring season either. In 2014 he scored 20 goals and this campaign makes him the 14th player in the history of the league to score 20 goals in a season multiple times.
Only Stephen Geoghegan, Glen Crowe, Jason Byrne and Gary Twigg have done so in the two-division era of the last 32 years.
Still just 27, if Hoban even maintains close to his record of his three years with Dundalk in the coming seasons he will not just be part of the history books for his 2018 season but as one of the league's all-time greats.
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