Putting the small ‘a’ back in the GAA
We’ve spent the last 25 years making the GAA more professional. Time to make it amateur again.
About five years ago I signed up for a coaching course taking place over winter, something I like to do to learn something new, and expand my skillset. This was an innovative and progressive partnership with a local regional college and Ulster GAA. It attracted a high calibre of coach from all over the province; Cavan, Monaghan, Armagh and Tyrone. It was exactly what I was looking for: advanced level coaching, an in-depth look at technology and advanced training methods, in short a mini-masterclass in modern GAA management.
However, the further the course went on, the more disillusioned I became with the content. It wasn’t just the materials, although learning how to interpret GPS information did seem particularly irrelevant for a club coach. [one of the main takeaways from this by the way was, that the best way to train for matches, to replicate the number of high intensity sprints, kms covered, combined with ‘impacts’ is ? You guessed it. Play matches. What a revelation.]
Aside from spurious data analysis and some repetitive guff about building team spirit, what really annoyed me was the presented vision of the ideal team or coach that this syllabus was trying to create. That is; winners. I do not set out to lose any sporting contest I put myself forward in, but listening to one tutor bang on about accountability in the dressing room, the ‘purity’ of vision, and periodisation of individual schedules, I couldn’t help but feel that all this course was teaching me was how to run a team.
The GAA is not made of teams. It is made of clubs.
The GAA is not made of teams. It is made of clubs. Clubs are made of players, who come from families. So when I was hearing about how to run the pre-season goal setting session with flipcharts, SWOT analyses, hydration protocols and nutrition plans, all I could think about was, ‘well that doesn’t sound like much craic’. So much of what we teach at underage level is about sportsmanship, fun, enjoyment of the game, and encouraging your teammates. But here was a top level coach education programme that was steering us in what I felt was an opposite course. Winning has been made to mean so much, despite the John Wooden speech we watched at the start of a class. A sterile, process driven player experience that had been so stripped of any fun or unpredictability, I was really thinking about what sort of player would sign up for this?
Winning has been made to mean so much, despite the token John Wooden speech we watched at the start of a class.
The things I will remember from my playing days are training sessions in the snow, away days in Donegal, having the banter on the ferry going over to the Ards Peninsula, while trying to squeeze in a bag of chips in Zebedes in Castlewellan on the way home. Not my player assessment interview, a nutrition plan telling me how many grams of lean protein I should be fitting into my lunchbox every day, nor mind-numbing presentations about ‘style of play’ that filter out the fun and improvisation of our games. All of these course materials and techniques were derived from a completely professional world, divorced from any amateur ethos, and more importantly, divorced from the fraternal environment of a club where all these teams reside.
A popular modern fallacy seems to be that as time progresses, every advance is somehow taken as an irreversible modulation, as if regression has been engineered out of the world. We used to think cigarettes were a good way of reducing stress and looking cool in front of girls. Cigarette companies were among the most powerful lobbyists in the world. That changed. Don’t you feel different about how awesome ipads and screens are, when hearing that Steve Jobs would not let his children use perhaps Apple’s most transformative product? We used to think that to be President of Ireland you needed to be at least Five feet tall and under the age of 80. Not true anymore.
So it is in the world of the GAA, that we should be able to imagine and create a world where players can play County football AND have a social life. Managers should be able to take a county team and not be subjected to the vilest of abuse after a few bad games (and by the way, not be obliged to assemble a ‘Premier League’ sized management team, therefore justifying the now seemingly unavoidable salary). Players should be able to get beaten by their opposite number and not feel like a failure to the team because they decided not to haul their marker down by their shorts.
The depressing wave of Inter-County retirements, drastically narrowed age ranges of county squads and the increase in mental health issues a lot of players suffer from, should all combine to light a big red flashing beacon for the leaders of the association.
A collective will, some creative thinking and yes, strong leadership can steer the ship back towards a more social association. So much has been written about the problems. Less so the solutions. Here’s a few ideas how we can make the GAA amateur again, in a good way:
1. Less Training
A no-brainer right? The race to professionalism created unrealistic expectations for all teams, club and county alike. The commitment levels demanded means the pool of players willing to subject themselves to ever-more punishing schedules dwindles every year, with fewer and fewer players playing into their thirties. The strong get stronger, and all the fun is taken out of the process with less time spent on skills development and a poorer product on display.
How
The NCAA has not had a great year. It has been rocked by another round of scandals this week, so it may sound strange to be borrowing from a morally corrupt organisation such as them. However, in an attempt to forge competitive balance and to reduce the advantages that larger Universities naturally enjoy, collective trainings are strictly limited to a certain amount of hours per week. ‘It’ll never work’ people cry. ‘Sure what about the closed months of November and December’. Well, we all have these GPS Sports Bras it seems now. What about tracking the GPS data on the teams anonymously, and if you are caught training over and above the limits, you’re out of the Championship for two years.
It cannot be acceptable for teams to place the demands, physical and psychological on players who are at least in theory, still amateurs. It will also help even the competitive balance by stopping an elite Division One side demand 25 hours a week in training knowing that the prestige and probability of silverware will get a response.
Even a Division 2 team simply cannot gain the same commitment levels from a panel who would almost seem resigned to a two-game championship season at the start of the year.
2. Changing our Use of Technology
I feel a little bit embarrassed when I see county players with that little rectangular bulge sewn into their new geansaí, that may or may not be in my top ten. What are we doing with all this data? Shaming players at training on Tuesday (when their bodies have not fully recovered), or even forcing players into pointless running, to boost their stats on the printout at the end of the week. What about :
a) Using technology to reduces the need for so much collective training. Log your hours, do a session with the club, do some weights at the house, and allow players to take some of ownership back over their weekly schedule.
b) Actually listen to some of the Sports Scientists who are screaming at us for the way we are running our greatest athletes into the ground. Less is more, allow time to recover. All the protein and GPS tracking in Ireland won’t allow a player for properly recover if he is driving home from training on a Tuesday night, getting into bed at 11pm, to wake up at 6.30am for an hour’s commute to a job where he is maybe sitting a desk for 6 hours or more.
c) Use valuable resources and time invested into skills development, analyse kicking technique instead of deadlift posture, train hand-eye co-ordination instead of one handed push-ups. And for God’s sake, ban the backwards free-kick in football. It’s embarrassing.
3. Nutrition
One of the great buzz words of the past 5 years or so, but how many of our athletes actually understand it? How many of this generation’s players, getting meal plans cooked, boxed and couriered to them will be able to cook a family dinner in a few years? How about taking some time to show these players how to maybe, pan fry a fillet of hake, or do a chicken ballotine, or teach them something about wine! (Buckfast does not count.) Wouldn’t it be nice for these players to actually cook something for their partners, mothers, babysitting Grandparents who sacrifice so much to allow them to pursue their dreams? It’s a question of social education and a big building block that can help with that huge emotional drop-off when a playing career comes to an end.
The now disgraced Tom Humphreys wrote extensively on this in his 2006 book Dublin V Kerry,
where several players spoke out about the abuse of alcohol when their playing careers ended. Obesity is a rising problem in Ireland, and if the GAA could use its huge network as an education platform on how to eat well, everyone wins.
P.s. spoke to a young player involved with a Celtic Challenge hurling team. They have been training away for 3 months, without any info on recovery food, and the player goes home every night after training with nothing in his belly. Maybe he should know himself, but it is still amazing to me that these ‘Development Squads’ have such a narrow focus on activity.
4. Redrawing the Map
The fundamental issue about the future direction of the GAA, is about where its members will be. That is why the most important document in the GAA is not Micheal Horan’s first big speech, its not the new DG’s flashy new corporate vision, it’s not even Jim Gavin’s game plan for the championship. It’s the National Planning Framework . Because whatever plaster is stuck over the open wounds that already ooze and gape, the issues faced are centred around the settlement of the citizens of Ireland, and the goods, services and employment opportunities that need to be delivered to them.
When the state de-centralised public services in the 2006 Bertie Ahern led government , it led to a catastrophic ham-stringing of public services. Designed to re-energise previously neglected areas and economies, the only thing it succeeded in was isolating 3,000 civil servants from their areas of activity and severely hampering their potential. Not all agree on the new framework, see below for some extra reading on this.
Why Project Ireland 2040 is doomed to fail: By Dr Frank Crowley, Cork University Business School
Putting the Environmental Protection Agency in Wexford is a fine idea, in the Sunny South East on Johnstown Estate. But it so hampered their work, being out of the capital that Laura Burke Director General is still beating a path up and down to the capital 3–4 times a week. The rest of the staff are constantly fighting against this Bertie-made tide that a hair brained scheme created.
Yes, it is vital that other parts of the Country are stimulated with economic activity and deserve state institutions to be spread around, but without the infrastructure, networks and populations to serve them, they are lame ducks, toothless and flightless.
Whatever the success of Ireland 2040, the GAA must also realise its resources and people are too concentrated on the East Coast. A traditionally rural network of clubs has been utterly changed by urbanisation and the concentration of employment in towns and cities. If the GAA is to survive in under-populated areas, we must start to re-draw the map, or will see clubs, traditions and heritage erased from the association.
Lets examine another network that is designed on the County system, public libraries. Every County Council is obliged to provide a library for its citizens. It would make sense then, that counties with bigger populations, provide more services for them. Cork is the only county that provides more than one, expect for Dublin. Dublin has five, six if you include the National Library on Kildare Street. So how the future of the GAA County system can seek to be based upon a 13th century Anglo-Norman division of the country is beyond me.
Case Study
Cuala won the Leinster Provincial Final beating Kilcormac-Killoughey, one of the more successful clubs in Leinster over the past ten years. Cuala’s jersey sponsor is Davy, Ireland’s oldest investment company and portfolio manager, with a workforce of over 600. Kilcormac-Killoughey, four times Offaly champions in the past 6 years, do not have one.
County heritage is an essential part of the GAA’s history. But if we care anything about equality of opportunity, we cannot pretend that it is fair for one county to start on such a head-start on population base, playing resources and financial muscle.
And, if fairness and honest competition mean anything to the GAA, something has got to be done to limit the seemingly endless encroachment of training programmes into the social and family lives of GAA players, coaches and administrators. The admission of the need for a second tier competition in gaelic football is a tacit reminder that the association seems to have recognised different counties are living in different universes, but show no will to do anything meaningful about it.
CK
