How clubs can use 'streaming' as an effective coaching tool

By John Harrington

In his eight years as a Games Promotion Officer in Dublin, first with Lucan Sarsfields and then St. Brigid’s, the topic that Dr. David Moran was asked about most was ‘streaming’.

Should clubs do it? If they should, then how and when should they do it?

‘Streaming’ is the practice of separating an age cohort of players in a club into different teams based on their ability rather than fielding teams of mixed ability.

It’s a consideration for large urban clubs with the numbers to field multiple teams in the same age-grade, but it’s an approach that can be emotive.

Its proponents say that training with and playing against players of a similar ability makes for a more enjoyable and developmentally positive experience for all players regardless of their ability.

Opponents of ‘streaming’ say it’s an elitist approach that could damage the confidence of players not deemed good enough for the ‘A’ team and diminish the experience of friends who find themselves now playing for different teams.

Today, at a Knowledge Exchange Event in Ulster University entitled, ‘Shaping the Future of Gaelic Games: Evidence, Experience, & Evolution in Youth Sport’, Dr. David Moran will deliver a presentation on streaming in Gaelic games.

It’s a topic he’s very well qualified to speak on, and not just because he was a Games Promotion Officer for eight years, is an active Coach Developer, coaches the Dublin U16 footballers, and his daughter’s U15 club team.

He’s also a post-doctoral Researcher with the Insight Research Ireland Centre for Data Analytics and the school of Health and Human Performance in DCU and is currently working on a collaborative project involving DCU and Insight on ‘streaming’ in Gaelic games which he will draw heavily on at today's event.

For that piece of work he interviewed 85 participants – players, parents and coaches across the U13, U15, an U18 grades from town and urban clubs that had sufficient numbers to allow for ‘streaming’ across various ability levels.

What came across strongly to Moran when carrying out his research was that ‘streaming’ can be a very useful coaching tool, but only if it’s used appropriately.

“Something that emerged very clearly was that in these really big clubs where you might have 80 kids training at Go Games level and playing with different players every single week was that it was difficult for them to form a connection with such a broad group,” said Moran.

“Once streaming was implemented and they are just with their own team on a more frequent basis, they found that they enjoyed that idea of being part of a team. They liked getting to know their team-mates more, they liked that sense of belonging.

“It also offered an appropriate challenge. There were a lot of reflections from parents especially of kids who were very much fringe players when teams had mixed ability, but once streaming came in it gave those players the opportunity to find their level and become more involved.

“So a child who might go through a Go Game and not get a huge amount of touches of a ball, now in a streamed setting was impacting the game and making a difference.

“And high ability players who found it too easy when they played in mixed ability games are now being challenged all the time by playing in a group that's of their level.

“That appropriate challenge was beneficial across the board as was that sense of being involved in a team.

“So, there's a range of benefits, but like anything else in coaching, it's a tool and a method and it requires a bit more education around it.”

According to Dr. Moran, problems arise with ‘streaming’ when clubs prioritise the needs of their ‘A’ teams at the expense of the players of lower ability.

“There were a couple of areas where people felt that streaming could be done better and this was hugely dependent on the coach or club policy,” he says.

“For example, one of the aspects of where clubs could do better was around the allocation of resources. There was this idea that the ‘A’ team in some clubs were the beneficiaries of better coaches and got better training slots.

“There were instances of people telling me about some really strict segregation in training where 'B' players weren't allowed to train with 'A' players. The teams were being isolated off into their own silos as opposed to being one connected club.

“People felt this led to the gap growing over time between these teams as opposed to remaining stable or even closing. So, your strong get stronger and your weaker players are just left behind and that gap just grows over time.

“A lack of flexibility was another thing that some people reported when streaming was implemented. The A team was the A team, B was B, and C was C and there was very little movement between those panels.

“I spoke to a parent of a player who played for a club where the coaches didn't allow any movement between their streamed teams for something like four years. This parent told me that their child felt they were failing.

“They felt like even though they were one of the better players on the 'C' team, because they weren't getting called up to the 'B' team they felt they were failing and this affected their motivation.”

So, if a club does decide to stream their teams in particular age-grades, how should they go about doing it in a way that will benefit all players rather than prioritise the needs of those deemed to have the most ability?

“Of the coaches that I spoke to, one really stands out in particular,” says Moran. “He was an U13 coach and I spoke to him at an U13 ‘D’ football match. He had no child involved, his child was on that club's 'A' team.

“He was telling me that he had learned a lot from the experience when he went through that process with his older son.

“As soon as ‘streaming’ was implemented with his older son’s group they basically split the group of players into three different teams and there was no communication, shared language, shared goals, or shared way of playing.

“His exact words were that they may as well have been in three different clubs. When I spoke to him it was his second time to bring an age cohort through the system and the group he was with this time had a common mentor group who managed all of the boys at that age.

“They would take it in turns to go and coach the different groups of boys. So even though those boys were A, B, C, and D, they were pretty much getting the same messages from all the coaches in terms of having a common language and the same training plans.

“They were trying to play football the same way with the four different groups and they were using the same language and there was a huge amount of connection between the mentors.

“That way they could easily identify if a boy with the D or C team was clearly developing at a quicker rate than their peers and if they needed more of a challenge then they could be moved up. And if a boy was struggling at a certain level then they might be better served by moving down a level to even out the numbers.

“He was saying when that approach was taken it made things an awful lot easier and there was no feeling of favouritism in the club towards a particular group and no perception a particular group was getting the benefit of the better coaches or training slots, et cetera.

“They were one club now across four different levels as opposed to the opposite experience of feeling like four different clubs which a lot of clubs unfortunately seem to be following whereby they stream and then have A, B, and C teams and its good luck and see you later, we don't talk, nobody moves between the teams, and we fight for our own training slots and equipment.”

The finding from his research that surprised Moran the most was the lack of understanding parents and coaches had about what motivated lower ability female players.

“When it came to the lower ability female players, so the 'C' team or B team girls in some clubs, most of the adults around them, the parents and the coaches, had the idea that they just wanted to turn up and play as a social thing, for the friendships, and were just happy to have a bit of craic,” says Moran.

“All of these girls were using language like 'we fought for a win', 'we want better coaching', 'we want to win', so their language did not match up to what the parents and coaches were saying.

“This was the only group that this happened with. The parents and coaches understood the motivation of other every group - higher ability girls, higher ability boys, lower ability boys - but lower ability girls were the outlier.

“They thought they just wanted to be social but the girls themselves were telling me very explicitly that they were there to win. They want to get better and they want better training.

“The problem is that this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where the coaches and the parents maybe think, ah, they don't really care, they're here for the craic, and so they lower the expectations for players and it’s harder then for the players to push beyond those boundaries.”

‘Streaming’ can be an emotive issue for clubs, but Moran believes most concerns can be addressed if a consistent approach is adopted at all levels and codes in a club with a premium placed on communication and flexibility.

“My personal experience from having seen this research project through is that streaming can offer a range of benefits,” he says.

“And I think that comes through in the paper that we’ve written and the presentation that I'll give on Friday.

“The issue is in current practice there seems to be a number of factors that can mitigate against those benefits.

“Because streaming is a tool and like any other tool that a coach has at his or her disposal it requires a level of understanding and a degree of consideration from coaches and club administrators but there’s a lack of guidance available to clubs on how to manage ‘streaming’.

“That’s why at times ‘streaming’ can be like the wild west because it's done differently from club to club and it can be done differently within clubs too. So your U-14 boys stream differently than U-15 boys and it could be done differently from your camogie to your ladies football in a club.

“Because it's done so many different ways that's potentially where the issues lie at the moment. Obviously the GAA is so contextual and there are so many different localised factors in clubs so a one size fits all approach won’t necessarily work.

“But there definitely could be some more guidance on how you might approach streaming and what the benefits of streaming might be. That could help people understand it a bit more and help them see the range of benefits.”

This is a collaborative project between DCU and Insight Research Ireland Centre for Data Analytics involving Dr David Moran, Dr Stephen Behan, Dr Jamie Taylor, Dr Áine Macnamara and Dr Peter Horgan