How to use An Stats

That's the whole loop. The rest of this guide covers everything in depth.

01Install & activate

An Stats runs on Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit). Download an-stats-1.25.2-setup.exe from your account email or from anstats.com, run it, and it installs with a desktop shortcut.

Entering your licence key

The first time you open An Stats it asks for a licence key on the Enter your licence key screen. Paste the key you were emailed — it looks like ANS1.… — and press Activate. Activation is completely offline; nothing is sent anywhere.

• Each key is issued to a named organisation, and that name appears on every report the app produces.
• Anything already on the machine — matches, events, exports — stays exactly where it is; the key only unlocks the interface.
• A licence covers every version released up to its expiry date, so it keeps working on the builds it came with even after it lapses. Updates released after that need a renewal.

You can review your licence any time under ⚙ Settings → Licence, which shows the organisation it's registered to and the date it runs until.

02The An Stats window

Everything happens in one window. It has four areas:

• The top bar — the app's controls, left to right: Stats, Roster, Sync, Generate Report, Export…, Open Video…, the light/dark theme toggle, and ⚙ Settings. Some stay greyed out until a match is open.
• The main stage (centre) — shows your match library when nothing is open, the video player once you open a recording, or the match clock in live mode.
• The tag panel (right) — the buttons you tag events with.
• The event list (bottom) — every event you've tagged, newest activity in view. Click a row to jump the video to it; tick rows to build a review playlist.

Use the theme toggle (🌙 / ☀) to switch between light and dark whenever it suits the room.

03Set up a match

The match library

With no video open, the main stage is your Match library — every match you've tagged, listed by date with its teams, competition and event count. Click any row to reopen it (video, events, report and all). The 🗑 button deletes a match and its events; your exported files are never touched.

Starting a new match

Open a recording — drag it onto the window, press Ctrl+O, or use Open Video…. An Stats then asks for the match details:

• Your team (remembered as the default for next time)
• Opposition
• Date (defaults to today)
• Competition — e.g. League Round 3

Press Save match and you're ready to tag. Supported video files: MP4, MKV, MOV, AVI, WEBM and M4V.

04Tag the events

Tagging is the heart of An Stats: as the game plays, you press one button per event and it's logged at the exact video time. The rhythm is:

1. Play the video to the moment of the event (Space to play/pause).
2. Set any context first: the Team toggle (T), and for shots the Play / Free toggle (F).
3. Optionally type a Player #, add a Note, or click a pitch location — these attach to the next tag only.
4. Press the event's button or hotkey. A confirmation flashes, e.g. "shot from play · point (Ballyduff) @ 12:03 — Ctrl+Z to undo".

The Player #, Note and Location fields clear after each tag so a fast follow-up doesn't inherit them; the Team and Play/Free toggles stay as you set them. Everything you tag appears in the event list below, where you can edit it, move its location, delete it, or click it to seek.

The events you can tag

Buttons are grouped on the tag panel. In football the groups are Kickouts (your team and the opposition), Shot, Set piece, Turnover, Free, Play, Possession and Discipline — plus any custom buttons you add. Here's what each covers (hotkeys are in the next section):

• Kickout / Puckout — Won clean, Won break, Lost, logged for your team and the opposition.
• Shot — Point, 2-Pointer, Goal, Wide, Short, Saved. The Play / Free toggle records whether it was from play or from a free.
• Set piece — Mark won and 45 awarded (football), or 65 awarded (hurling & camogie).
• Turnover — Won / Conceded.
• Free — Won / Conceded.
• Play — Good pass, Bad pass, Assist, Blunder, Block, Missed tackle.
• Possession — Our ball, Their ball, Contested, Play stopped. These drive the possession clock.
• Discipline — Yellow card, Black card (football only), Red card.

Half time and breaks

Two buttons at the top of the panel mark the run of play:

• HT — tags half time and swaps ends, so pitch locations stay relative to your own goal.
• Break… — tags any other break (water break, end of a quarter). Type a label or leave it blank.

Each break starts a new period in the report; only half time flips the ends.

05Keyboard shortcuts

Hotkeys are what let tagging keep pace with the game. They work whenever you're not typing in a text box and no dialog is open. Press ? at any time for the built-in cheat sheet.

Player, clock & actions

Event hotkeys (default football layout)

Every one of these can be rebound or hidden per code — see Customise the buttons.

06Pitch locations

Location is optional but it's what powers the shot maps, kickout maps, heatmaps and expected points. In the tag panel there's a small pitch diagram under Location (optional, click pitch). Click where the event happened and a marker drops; the location attaches to your next tag. The ✕ Clear location button removes it.

• The pitch is drawn with your goal at the top and the opposition's at the bottom.
• After half time, press X (or the Swap ends button) so locations stay relative to your own goal — An Stats rotates the second half for you.
• You can add or change a location on any existing event later from its Location cell in the event list. Each stored location shows as a tiny pitch thumbnail in the list.

07Rosters & players

Set your squad up once and names follow through the event list, the report and the season stats. Click Roster in the top bar to open Player rosters — one column per team.

• Type a shirt # and a name, then Enter — the number auto-advances so you can type a whole squad name-by-name.
• Rosters are saved per team name and reused across every match against that team. Load a saved roster… copies another team's squad in.
• While tagging, type the shirt number in Player # before you press an event button. If that number is on the roster, the player's name shows as a hint, and the event is credited to them.

08Video playback

Drag any recording onto the window to play it — MP4, MKV, MOV, AVI, WEBM or M4V, from a camcorder, a phone or a Veo-style export. The transport bar gives you:

• Play / pause, the current time and total duration, and a scrubber.
• Variable speed — 0.25×, 0.5×, 0.75×, 1×, 1.25×, 1.5×, 1.75×, 2× and 3× — with the ↑ / ↓ keys or the − / + buttons.
• Event markers on the scrubber: every tagged event is a coloured dot. Hover for a tooltip, click to seek straight to it. Half-time and breaks show as their own markers.

Clicking a row in the event list also jumps the video to that event.

09Live mode

No footage yet? Tag live from the stand. In the Match library click ● Live match…, enter the same match details, and press Start live match. Instead of a video you get a large match clock:

• Space starts and pauses the clock; ← / → adjust it by 5 seconds (hold Shift for 1 second).
• Tag events exactly as you would with video — they're timestamped from the clock.
• The clock keeps its time even if you close the app mid-match.

Sideline mode

On the touchline, click Sideline mode under the live clock for a big-button, one-thumb layout: the scoreboard and clock up top, a tappable pitch map for locations, and large per-team buttons for scores and kickouts / puckouts. A detail toggle at the top of the screen switches between three levels, so you can drop to the big simple buttons mid-match without leaving the screen:

• Simple — per team, two restart buttons: Kickout won and Kickout lost (a win is recorded as won clean).
• Detailed — the full restart split per team — Won clean · Won break · Lost — plus Tackle won and Missed tackle buttons alongside the turnover and free row.
• Full — everything in Detailed, plus a Short / Mid / Long selector that arms a length for your next kickout tap. The length lands on that restart (feeding the report's Restarts by length table) and then clears, ready for the next one. Tap the armed length again to disarm it.

The toggle starts on the level matching your app mode — Standard opens Simple, Advanced opens Detailed, Pro opens Full — and remembers your last choice.

A possession chip beside the pitch map shows who has the ball and for how long — the same clock as the desk view and the report — with Our ball / Their ball buttons to flip it during spells with nothing else to tag, plus Contested for a breaking ball nobody controls and Play stopped for a dead ball, which the possession clock excludes.

Snapshot

Tap Snapshot (in the turnover/free row, on every detail level) for a one-tap match-day report you can hand to a manager at half-time or full-time: the scoreboard and live win probability, a score worm, kickout and shot graphics, turnover and free counts, first-half vs second-half splits, and mini pitch maps of every located shot and kickout — all built from the same numbers as the printed report. The pitch maps are per-team: a thumb-sized Us/Them switch flips between each side's shot, kickout and turnover maps, each with a compact legend of only the outcomes it shows, and the saved image always includes both teams. Save image writes it as a PNG beside the match's other files (and into Drive sync, if connected), ready for the team group chat.

Afterwards, click Attach video recording… and point An Stats at the footage. Every event you tagged lines up on the video automatically.

10Customise the buttons

Open ⚙ Settings → Tagging.

Choose your code

Pick a Sport preset — Football, Hurling, Camogie or Ladies football. It swaps the whole button set and applies immediately. The differences:

Rename, rebind or hide buttons

Every preset button has a checkbox (show/hide), an editable label and a single-character hotkey. Change whatever suits your terminology — it's saved per code and applied straight away.

Custom buttons

Add your own events under Custom buttons — give each a label, an event type, an outcome and a key. They appear in a Custom group on the tag panel and flow through the event list, exports and report like any built-in event.

11The match report

Click Generate Report (available once a match has at least one event) to open the report preview, then Save PDF for a document you can hand straight to management. Two filters let you focus the preview and the saved PDF:

• Period — the full match, or a single half / period (available once you've tagged a half time or break).
• Events — all events, or just one type.

What's in it

Above the sections is a summary strip — shots, conversion, expected points, own restarts won, points per possession, turnovers won and wides — and the scoreline. Then the full sections, in order:

1. Head to head — shots, scores, wides, turnovers won and frees won, side by side.
2. Match momentum — a rolling momentum curve over the running points difference.
3. Possessions — counts, how they ended, points and points per possession, and where possession was won.
4. Possession clock — time on the ball, share, average possession and giveaways won back.
5. Kickouts / Puckouts — total, won clean, won break, lost and win % for both sides.
6. Kickout / Puckout maps — where each side's restarts went.
7. Shooting — from play vs from frees: shots, scores, wides, short/saved, conversion and xP.
8. Expected points (xP) — shots, located shots, xP, actual points and finishing ±.
9. Shot maps — every located shot, coloured by outcome (dashed = from a free).
10. Scores by player — the scorers, with roster names.
11. Player ratings — a rating per player with the involvements that drove it.
12. Turnovers & wides.
13. Turnover maps.
14. Activity heatmaps — where each team played.
15. Event timeline — every event, colour-coded, end to end.

Tag a half time or any break and the report adds a score-by-period table and a full breakdown (stats, shot maps and heatmaps) for each half or period on top of these.

12Stats & the season

The Stats button opens Stats — all matches, aggregated across everything you've tagged. Four tabs:

• Players — every player's season totals: matches, shots, score, conversion, xP and finishing ±, turnovers and frees won, cards, points per match and rating. Click a column to sort, a row for the per-match breakdown (with a ▶ Watch button back to the footage), or the row's PDF button for that player's development report.
• Teams — the same totals per team, with per-match rows.
• Season — trend charts for one team: points per match, shot conversion, xP, kickout / puckout win % and turnovers won, plus a results table.
• Scouting — pick an opponent and export their scouting dossier.

The footer has Export CSV for the current tab, and a one-click season report or scouting report PDF depending on the tab.

13Player ratings

Every player starts each match at 6.0. Each involvement you tag moves the rating by a set weight; the total is converted with rating = 6.0 + 0.35 × total and clamped between 1 and 10. Hover any rating (or read the report's "What drove it" column) to see exactly which involvements moved it.

The default weights — tune any of them under ⚙ Settings → Ratings:

Because the weights are visible and editable, the rating is a transparent record of what you tagged — not a black box. Changes apply the next time you open stats or a report.

14Expected points (xP)

Expected points separate chance quality from finishing. Each shot gets a scoring probability based on where on the pitch it was taken, multiplied by the value of the attempt — goal chances count 3, two-pointers 2, points 1.

• The closer and more central the shot, the higher its probability.
• Frees are modelled as more repeatable than shots from play from the same spot.
• Shots you didn't give a location fall back to league-average probabilities, so they still count.

Finishing ± is a team's actual points minus its xP: above zero means it scored better than the chances it created. You'll see xP on the report's Shooting and Expected points sections and throughout the stats tables.

15Review playlists

Turn any selection of events into a video session without exporting a thing. In the event list, tick the events you want — every shot from #14, every lost kickout — and a ▶ Play N clips button appears. An Stats plays each one back to back in the player, using a lead-in and lead-out around each event (8 seconds in, 5 seconds out by default). A playlist bar gives you previous / next / stop.

Build a different playlist for the forwards, the backs and the management meeting — all from the same tagged match. (Playlists run in video mode; attach the footage first if you tagged live.)

16Clips & highlight reels

Click Export… to cut real video files. Filter to what you need — by event type, team, or player number — tick the clips you want, and export.

• Each clip is named automatically, e.g. 03 - Shot from play, point - #14 John Smith - 04m12s.mp4.
• Adjust the lead-in (8s) and lead-out (5s) around each event; you can set per-event-type times under Settings → Export.
• Leave "Also build highlight reel" ticked to stitch every clip into one highlight-reel.mp4.
• Clips are cut with stream copy — no re-encoding, so even a full match exports in minutes.

Everything lands in Documents\GAA Analysis\<date> vs <opposition>\, alongside a manifest of the export and a fresh backup of your database.

17CSV & PDF reports

Beyond the match report, An Stats produces:

• CSV exports — from the Stats window, Export CSV saves the current tab (Players, Teams, Season or Scouting) with your sorting and filters, ready for Excel.
• Player development report (PDF) — summary cards, points-vs-xP and rating trends, a personal shot map and heatmap, and a match-by-match table. Ideal for a one-to-one review.
• Opposition scouting report (PDF) — every meeting with an opponent in one dossier: scorer threats and who to mark, restart patterns and maps, turnover zones and possession sources, all normalised so the patterns hold from game to game.
• Season report (PDF) — the record, scoring and efficiency trends, results (including result-only matches), a team comparison and full player statistics, for the committee or county board.

18Google Drive backup

An Stats can back everything up to your own Google Drive, automatically. Open ⚙ Settings → Google Drive and click Connect Google Drive — sign in through the browser window that opens and you're done. (Advanced users can supply their own Google OAuth client instead.)

• From then on every clip, highlight reel, report PDF, stats CSV and a full copy of your database upload to a GAA Analysis folder in your Drive — matches under Matches/, documents under Reports/, and the database under Backups/.
• It only ever touches files it created — the app can't see the rest of your Drive — and nothing passes through An Stats; uploads go straight from your machine to your Drive.
• Offline is fine: files queue locally and upload when you're next online. The Sync button shows what's pending and lets you pause, resume or retry.

19Settings reference

The ⚙ Settings dialog has five tabs:

• Google Drive — connect or disconnect your Drive, or add your own OAuth client.
• Export — default clip lead-in (8s) and lead-out (5s), with optional per-event-type overrides.
• Tagging — the sport preset, per-button rename / rebind / hide, and custom buttons.
• Ratings — the weight for every involvement, with Reset to defaults.
• Licence — your licence status and a box to enter a new key.

The light / dark theme toggle and the Roster editor live on the top bar rather than in Settings.

20Where your files live

An Stats keeps everything on your own machine:

• Your database (every match and event) — %APPDATA%\gaa-analyst\gaa-analyst.db. It's a standard SQLite file; it never expires and it's yours.
• Exports (clips, reels, reports, CSVs, database backup) — Documents\GAA Analysis\, in a folder per match.

Nothing is uploaded unless you connect Google Drive, and even then it goes only to your own Drive.

21FAQ & troubleshooting

The tag buttons are greyed out.

You need an open match first — open a video (or start a live match) and save the match details.

My video won't play.

An Stats plays MP4, MKV, MOV, AVI, WEBM and M4V, but playback still depends on the codecs Windows can handle. If a file won't play, try an MP4 (H.264) export of it.

I tagged the wrong thing.

Press Ctrl+Z straight away to undo, or edit / delete the event in the event list.

My second-half shot maps look mirrored.

Press X (Swap ends) at half time so locations stay relative to your own goal. You can also fix a location from the event's Location cell.

Can I export clips from a live match?

Attach the recording first (Attach video recording…); export unlocks once there's footage to cut from.

Does it need broadband?

No. Tagging, reports and exports are entirely offline. Google Drive backup is the only online part, and it simply catches up when you reconnect.

What happens if our licence lapses?

Your data stays yours, on your machine, forever. The licence covers the versions it came with; renewing keeps you on new updates and support.

Still stuck? Email info@anstats.com — support comes straight from the people who build it.