New coaching workshops will be a real gamechanger

By John Harrington

Gaelic games coaches who are coaching players in the F3 stage (youth/adult) of the Player Pathway can now avail of innovative and practical three-hour ‘In-Game Coaching workshops’ that will coach specific patterns of play using the full pitch.

Various workshops will take place in the coming weeks and cover coaching outcomes such as developing and designing phases of play, coaching a set play, restart to score, how to beat a blanket defence, implementing a Plus 1 and implementing and coaching puck-out and kick-out strategies. Each workshop is limited to 16 places, and costs £25/€30.

The workshops were devised by an 22-strong group that includes Philip Kerr, Derek Mc Grath, Jack Cooney, Colm Nally, Niall Williams and Aine Fanning to name but a few.

The In-Game Coaching Workshops have been developed by some of the finest coaching minds in Gaelic games.

That group was headed up by Chairperson of the Coach Development Advisory Committee, Liam Moggan, who believes the workshops will be a hugely practical coaching aid for everyone who signs up.

“It's a start, middle, and end in three hours,” says Moggan.

“There are specially trained coach developers delivering the workshops in approved centres. It incorporates the rulebook and the application of the rules as per the rule-book which is important, because unless the rules are applied you have anarchy and coaching is redundant.

“As a coach of a team I should be able to go back the following day and introduce, demonstrate, lay out, and progress a pattern of play from the three-hour work-shop I have had.

“You're learning by doing and you're very specifically doing the kind of work that a good coach should do. And you're doing it fully related to the game on the full pitch using all the players.

“It's deeply practical and deeply relevant. The coach should walk out after it saying to themselves that they can't wait for the session with their team tomorrow because they know how to do this.”

Liam Moggan, chair of the coach development advisory committee, centre, with Uachtarán Cumann Peil Gael na mBan Mícheál Naughton and LGFA chief executive officer Helen O'Rourke at a GAA, LGFA & Camogie Association coaching photoshoot at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile.

Quite often coaches who have learned their trade coaching juvenile teams where there’s an emphasis on small-sided games, drills, and coaching in pods, find the transition to coaching youth and adult teams by using the full pitch a difficult challenge.

Moggan believes these workshops will give them the know-how and confidence to deliver such sessions.

“There are hugely different coaching skills required,” he says. “The lay-out, the demonstrations, the number of times you can stop to bring the players in.

How you have a start, middle, and end of the activity so the players themselves can take some charge of the restart because over the full pitch you can't be bringing them in every now and then.

“We set a challenge that if you're only able to bring them in three times. So, when will that be, what will you say, and where will you bring them to.

“There are great benefits for the players to be coached on the full-size pitch. It allows them to technically and physically get better and tactically become more aware.

“They're getting physically better by playing football or hurling, they're getting technically better by applying the techniques in the pattern of play that's being used, and because it involves all the pitch, then tactically they're involved too.”

The Gaelic Games Coach Pathway.

Whatever sort of coach you are, whatever your strengths or weaknesses, Moggan believes these three-hour workshops will make you a more well-rounded coach.

“It challenges the coaches in two ways,” he says. “One, it challenges them on their coaching skills. Two, it challenges their knowledge of the game.

“Their knowledge of defensive principles, attacking principles, the game in transition, maximising possession. It challenges them to up their knowledge of the game and how the game should be played.

“Sometimes you will get people who are excellent coaches but don't know the game enough, or people who really know the game very well but are not great coaches, this is an effort to get a balance into the whole thing.

“Because it's confined to a maximum of 16 coaches there's a great opportunity in the three hours for interaction amongst each other.

“So, it isn't only the coach developer and their material they'll end up going away with, they'll also get the chance to learn from each other a lot.”

Limited places per workshop. You can sign up for the upcoming coaching workshops at the below links.