By John Harrington

Dr. Kate Kirby is the Head of Performance Psychology at the Sport Ireland Institute and Lead of the Psychology sub-group of the Gaelic Games Sports Science Working Group.

She has worked at the highest level of sport for over a decade working with numerous governing bodies, Olympic athletes, and inter-county GAA teams.

GAA.ie spoke to her this week about the work of the Gaelic Games Sports Science Working Group, how Sports Psychology’s relationship with Gaelic Games has become a much closer one over the course of the last 25 years, and the mental challenges faced by GAA players during the Covid-19 pandemic.

GAA.ie: Kate, the use of Sports Psychology in Gaelic Games is now much more accepted than it once was, isn't it? When Niamh Fitzpatrick worked with the All-Ireland winning Wexford hurling team in 1996 they were very careful to keep it a secret because the attitude back then would have been that working with a sports psychologist was an admission of some sort of weakness. It just wasn't the done thing. We've come a long way since then, haven't we?

Kate Kirby: Yeah, massively. Niamh has been a huge influence on my career and an unofficial mentor for me on the way up. I remember ringing her in some of the first roles I had when I was blocked from the changing room and had coaches not really wanting me to talk to players directly without them being involved.

The evolution and acceptance of it as a discipline is unrecognisable from when I qualified back in 2005. I would have to say the GAA have been at the forefront of that change. There are some sports that have not followed suit with the same speed. It's very widely accepted now compared to then. And Niamh was another ten years previous to that so she really was one of the early pioneers when she worked with Liam Griffin and Wexford, who were definitely ahead of their time in how much they embraced it.

GAA.ie: Now when an inter-county manager puts a backroom team together it's almost a given that they will look to get a sports psychologist involved. The association of sports psychologists like Caroline Currid, to name just one, with successful inter-county teams has highlighted the benefits of doing so. The psychology of sport is a crucial component now if you want to be successful, isn't it?

KK: There are two strands. One is the actual athlete welfare side of things and just making sure athletes are looked after in terms of their mental health. There's also the performance-focused side of psychology and both are pretty important.

The mental health side of sport psychology was probably overlooked for a long time as well and has become much more of an open discussion. You don't want performance at the detriment of peoples' wellbeing.

A lot of what I would do and what the other people in the Sports Science Working Group with me are really passionate about is looking after the athlete's needs because if you have a healthy athlete who is enjoying what they're doing then performance is often a by-product of that anyway.

GAA.ie: In terms of what you're looking to work on with the Gaelic Games Sports Science Working Group, is it those two areas? Both the Wellbeing Psychology and the Performance Psychology?

KK: It started out when I was approached by (Chairperson of the Gaelic Games Sports Science Working Group) Aoife Lane as one umbrella of wellbeing and performance psychology. We discussed it and expanded the group so we had performance psychologists in the group which would be Kevin McManamaon, Ciaran Kearney, Ciara Losty, and myself.

And then we had two clincial psychologists, Paul Gaffney, and Colin O'Driscoll. When we discussed it we figured out they were actually quite separate pathways although they come under the same umbrella. So having originally started working together as the one umbrella, we've actually split it out and formed two separate sub-groups for psychology because although they are related and similar, the support delivery is quite separate.

And also the route to accreditation for practicioners is totally different. What we've figured out is that the GAA, LGFA, Camogie Association and the GPA and WGPA have done quite a bit of the ground-work already in terms of putting programmes in place around wellbeing.

But there wasn't really a framework or pathway that you could actually look at and go, well, this is who looks after players at this stage of their career, and this is who is responsible for their welfare at this stage of their career.

So that welfare group, rather than trying to implement any massive changes, they're actually just trying to collate what already exists and put it into a meaningful framework and making sure it is delivered by properly accredited people and people who will have a lasting impact.

Then what we figured out on the Sports Psychology side, the lack of regulation on that side of things is probably where the biggest gap is. You mentioned earlier that you have a lot of county managers going out to find sports psychologists, but, really, because there isn't a very clear pathway of where graduates go or any protections of the term 'Psychologist', there's huge variation in who is delivering sports psychology or mental skills and the level of qualification and expertise they have.

So, for us in the Performance Psychology side of things, we're really focusing on two areas. One is to establish a framework for what's appropriate to introduce at different levels of the athlete's life-span and who is responsible for delivering it. And also putting some guidelines around the qualifications and experience of practicioners who should be working with athletes at different levels of their career.

GAA.ie: Having that proper accreditation model is vital, isn't it? Otherwise you'll have people getting involved with players and teams who aren't qualified to be involved?

KK: It's a massive problem. In Ireland the term 'Psychologist' isn't protected so really anyone can set themselves up with no educational background or experience and market themselves as a Sports Psychologist. Some other disciplines like nutrition, physiotherapy, and sports medicine have very rigorous criteria for being professionally accredited, as do clincial and counselling psychology, but sports psychology doesn't have it.

So that's one of the things we're trying to improve both for the GAA and clubs and counties who invest in practicioners, that they're getting good people. But also for the practicioners themselves because at the moment we have so many graduates coming out with Masters in Sports Psychology and no route for them to get experience, mentorship, or pathway towards their professional development.

So there's a gap there both for the deliverers of the service and the recipient of the service.

GAA.ie: I can imagine it would be very helpful for a club or county manager to have ready access to list of sports psychologists they immediately know are fully qualified.

KK: Yeah, absolutely. It's not available at the moment other than through the Institute of Sport and their register wasn't developed with a view towards being the one representative body for the profession.

What we're hoping to do is find a way of giving people opportunities and some supervision or mentorship and also just recognising that there are various levels of experience that might be suitable for different levels of performers in sport.

We're at a pretty exploratory stage of that at the moment and we will need to look at other countries and the models that they have in place and what is working, but I think the first step was recognising the gap and the second step was looking at the performance analysis group who have set the wheels in motion and have an up and running professional register through the GAA.

There are people who have gone before us and in a lot of ways have created the pathway for what we're trying to do in other disciplines.

GAA.ie: In terms of age-appropriate interventions when it comes to Sports Psychology, is there anything general or specific that needs to be done correctly there? For example, it a case that wellbeing psychology is sufficient for a younger group, and then as you start dealing with older and adult athletes there's more of a premium placed on performance psychology whilst also having wellbeing psychology in there?

KK: I think the great danger is trying to implement too serious of a programme with athletes at too young of an age. So a lot of the emphasis around psychology with youth sport is just around making it fun, helping them interact with other team-mates, how to build cooperation and social skills. And take the emphasis away from winning and outcome.

Realistically that would be delivered much more by the coaches at youth level and club level. And then as the athletes progress through the talent system to reach elite level, then absolutely there's a role for a specialist to come in and support the coaches in delivery of that.

We would see the coaches as having the primary role in terms of being the stewards of the mental skills development of young athletes.

GAA.ie: Is there much difference working with female and male athletes? There was an interesting piece in the Sunday Times at the weekend with the former Cork footballer Orlagh Farmer. She mentioned that in her experience female players are almost afraid to speak up if they're not feeling 100 per cent. That there's almost a people-pleasing aspect more with females than males. Have you noticed much difference when working with male and female athletes?

KK: There's a good deal of literature out there around the role that the team plays in male and female sporting careers. It does generalise, but mostly we see that males are much more motivated by task and by the team almost being a vehicle for them to pursue their own goals and they're much more results focused.

While results are important to women as well and they want to be competitive and successful, the crucial support aspect provided by team membership is much more important for women and that feeling of belonging to a team is probably more of a powerful motivator for women than it is for men.

Potentially that ties into the point that Orlagh made. Because team unity is so important to women, often they don't want to be seen to step out of line or to put their own needs ahead of those of the team. Because one of their bigger motivators is that crucial connection and the prioritisation of the group. It's not to say that male athletes don't prioritise their team-mates or have the same value in the group, but it does seem to be a stronger motivator for women.

GAA.ie: I'd imagine in the times that we're living through now, wellbeing psychology is a critical area because our GAA athletes who are used to being in a team environment are now having to do things on their own and possibly struggling with that and everything else that's going on with the Covid-19 pandemic?

KK: If someone tried to design a template for how to dampen motivation they would have come up with the conditions that we're living under at the moment.

The conditions that allow us to become motivated and to keep returning to that environment because we enjoy it and want to progress, a lot of those things have been removed through Covid. The main things are those that I mentioned earlier - a sense of relatedness and belonging to a group - because our ability to be part of any group at the moment is pretty limited.

A feeling of confidence which you get through training with and comparing yourself to others which is very difficult if you've set up a home gym or doing laps of the local park on your own. You don't get a lot of that confident feedback that keeps you motivated.

Then the other one is having a feeling of autonomy or feeling like you have control over your actions and are making your own decisions in pursuing your goals. A lot of our autonomy has been removed by the strict regulations that we're under.

With the removal of those three things - the autonomy, the relatedness, and the confidence - the motivational drivers for sport and team sport in particular have really been dampened down.

I'd say in the past year the focus of my consultations have really changed. Before a lot of them were really about building confidence and backing yourself and performing under pressure. This year it's been way more around dealing with low motivation and trying to push yourself even when you don't feel like it. It has definitely been a struggle for athletes this year.

GAA.ie: Is it a fine balancing act in these times between pushing yourself when you're feeling under-motivated but also maybe sometimes realising that it's okay to take a mental break for a period of time and to not put too much pressure on yourself?

KK: Yeah, absolutely. I think the messaging in the last 12 months has shifted a lot. We would have seen that a lot of athletes were really embracing the break in March and April last year, especially those involved in Olympic Sports and inter-county GAA when they were gearing up for a big season. A lot of them enjoyed not having the pressure to travel and having this hectic schedule and a lot of them used it as an opportunity to work on other areas such as maybe building strength, core, or speed.

The messaging around embracing this as an opportunity has becoming less and less realistic, I think, the longer it goes on. Much more the messaging is around being kind to yourself and accepting that some days you'll feel like you're going through the motions rather than really going to the well the way we assume athletes do day in and day out.

So, I definitely agree. Recognising when it's a struggle and accepting that it will be a struggle sometimes is really important. Because if you keep driving yourself into the ground you'll end up crashing. Or if your expectation is that you're going to nail every session 100 per cent the way you might have back in 2019, then if you're falling short of that constantly you're just going to get frustrated as well. So I think there is a degree of accepting the reality of the situation we're in and that motivation might be low at times but that's okay.

GAA.ie: The 'Be Ready to Play' programme that was launched last week looks like it will be a great resource for all Gaelic Games athletes. There's going to be a sports psychology component to that, won't there?

KK: There will, yeah. We're up in May. The challenge for us because it's such a broad area is figuring out what's going to resonate with most people in that population of youth level, adult level, coaches, parents. That's on our agenda for the next Sports Psychology Working Group meeting - what topic is actually going to be of most value to most people.

GAA.ie: Is it enjoyable being part of the Gaelic Games Sports Science Working Group?

KK: Oh yeah, it's great for me. I'm getting ideas from practicioners that I don't get to interact with on a regular basis. Even having had the wellbeing and the psychology aspects under the same umbrella originally, looking at it through the lens of the clincial psychologist and how they approach situations was really interesting to me.

And I've learned way more about the extent of the services that are already available to the GAA, the Healthy Clubs initiative for example, that I wouldn't have been as previously aware of. Aoife O'Brien has joined the group from the GAA's Community and Health department so we're making sure that we're connecting the dots between what's being done internally already and what this group is doing so we don't go off and duplicate work.

I think if our group is to leave any legacy it would be around establishing an accreditation framework so if a coach or manager decides that Sports Psychology is going to be part of their plans that they'd have somewhere to go.

Because we have seen that a lot of the recruitment practices involve people who don't know exactly what they're looking for. So having a clear role description for what a sports psychologist should do and where they can add value and, secondly, having a list of genuinely well-qualified and experience people that they could refer to, I think would be a really, really good lasting legacy for this group.