By John Harrington

Those working at the coal-face of Gaelic games coaching in Leinster are hugely enthused by the recruitment of 30 new full-time coaches who have just begun induction training.

Each of the newly appointed Games Promotion Officers will be attached to a specific club or clubs with around 90 clubs set to benefit from their expertise.

It’s the same model that has previously worked well in Dublin and through the East Leinster Project which covered Kildare, Louth, Meath, Wexford, and Wicklow.

This latest coach-recruitment drive primarily targets the remaining six counties in the province – Westmeath, Offaly, Longford, Laois, Carlow, and Kilkenny.

In just five years the implementation of the East Leinster Project has raised the participation numbers of both club players and coaches significantly, and Leinster North Games Development Manager, Alan Mulhall, is confident that trend will be replicated in these six counties.

“We've numerous positive examples over the last five years from clubs of different sizes across the province where we've put a GPO in,” Mulhall told GAA.ie.

“The big thing we've noticed is that the structure of the nurseries has improved. We have a full-time person there who is the constant with the nursery.

“So, the first introduction that everyone gets is with their GPO who helps run the nursery properly in each club and assists all the coaches there by mentoring them.

“What happens is that becomes a constant and then year on year you might get two or three people to stay with the nursery and they set up the same process.

“So it's not just relying on a parent whose kids are old enough to play nursery this year and you're wondering who's going to take it on.

“Then we see at the older age-groups there's a lot more exposure to GAA in schools. We've schools in Kildare, Meath, Wicklow, and Wexford that were previously getting some coaching in a block of around six weeks in a year. Now there's a coach who's able to go in and significantly longer periods in the school.

“What we've also noticed is that when you're getting to the 12, 13, 14, 15 age-groups we're getting an increase in the number of teams that are entering competitions across the age-grades. I suppose that's one of the real big measures that we see as a positive.

“We get loads more activity in schools and in clubs, and then we're also getting bigger numbers entering competitions and playing in the games programme at those age-groups.”

When a full time Games Promotion Officer is assigned to a club it leads to a very positive domino effect.

The knowledge the full-time coach possesses is quickly pooled with the volunteer coaches who benefit hugely from the experience, and the recruitment of new coaches is also accelerated.

“A GPO's main job is to help educate the coaches and to work with them and nearly be a sounding board for them,” says Mulhall.

“A lot of GPOs would have built up relationships up with different coaches coming up from nursery the whole way up with teams up to 16 and 17 years of age.

“It's of huge value for those coaches within a club to have someone there they can build a relationship with and bounce questions off.

“We also then roll out the Turas programme which is our coach education programme where our full-time coaches mentor the club coaches.”

Urbanisation has been a real challenge for the GAA in recent years for a number of reasons, one of which is that it can be difficult for GAA clubs to cater for the growing population in their catchment area.

The East Leinster Project proved that the recruitment of more full-time coaches improved the capacity of many urban-based GAA clubs to bring Gaelic games to greater numbers of young people.

“Take Celbridge for example,” says Mulhall. “We've Jonathan Daniels there as our GPO in Celbridge and five years ago they had 70 kids in their nursery. Now they're up to 200.

“Previously in a given year you would have maybe 30 boys and 15 or 20 girls graduating from the nursery to play with the U-7s. Last year they had 47 boys go up and thrity-something girls.

“And on top of that they have plenty of coaches that are willing to step up from the nursery and take charge of the U-7s. So it's not just the number of players that's growing in clubs like Celbridge, it's the number of coaches too.

“We’re seeing new clubs as well as teams being formed. Mairead Daly in Edenderry has helped set up a camogie club because the girls are getting more exposure to Camogie.

“Cappagh have gone out on their own rather than being a part of a combined team, and Straffan have set up an LGFA club.”

There aren’t as many large urban areas in the six counties now being targeted as there were in the East Leinster Project, but Mulhall is still hoping the gains will be significant in more ways than one.

“Some of these are rural counties and their participation numbers are high already. But still you'd be hope that the focus there will be on coach education, developing coaches, and developing good practices in those counties.

“The opportunity for growth probably isn't going to be as big in these six counties as it is in the larger urban areas, but there are still a lot of urban centres in these counties that we need to focus on as well to try to grow the numbers there.

“If we’re seeing more activity in both our schools and our clubs and we get a few extra teams entering the Go Games and a few extra teams entering U-13 and U-15 in four or five years’ time in counties like Westmeath, Offaly, Laois, Longford, Kilkenny, and Carlow, that will be a great measure of our success.”