Kevin Walsh:

Former Galway boss feels journey is only beginning for where coaching can go

Tribesmen are ready to take the next step

KEVIN WALSH is talking ‘drop steps’ and their potential place in Gaelic football – the practice of planting a foot in the ground and being able to pivot in a different direction so as to delay the physical commitment of a tackle and force an opponent to make a decision.

Technical detail, no doubt, largely imported from his other love – basketball – but the type of detail Walsh has always traded in as a coach, from his time in Sligo through to five years with Galway, at the end of which, last year, he left them in a better place than he found them.

For some, progress didn’t come quickly enough and their style invariably engendered debate and opposition even in their own county.

Rightly or wrongly, Walsh’s teams were labelled defensive and when that happens, the labels have a habit of sticking.

Walsh sees it differently though, even now with the benefit of almost 11 months’ distance from the job.

He sought to coach players to be better off the ball, whether that was in defensive or offensive mode.

Untouched

It’s an area he feels is largely untouched and somewhat uncoached in Gaelic football and something he is trying to broaden now through the development of Grow Coach, a website he has developed with his former Galway selectors Seán Conlon and Brian Silke that will focus on spatial awareness and better body positioning, among many other aspects.

“The off-the-ball part is huge which is what I want to look at,” he says. “How can players impact the game off the ball, in defence and offence?”

He acknowledges he has no certificates to back up his delivery, just a block of experience from someone who cross-pollinated between the two sports.

“I wanted to go at something most coaches don’t do, and I’m very clear on this, they don’t. You might say what qualifies me, it’s not college or anything like that but it’s something I have gone after massively in the last 10 years because of my background in basketball.

“I know other coaches have backgrounds in basketball but I’ve put a lot of time into it to understand how to bring it from small court to big court, how to apply it best.

“It’s spatial awareness, footwork, understanding what spaces to take and what space to make and how to do it, what different types of pressures to hit on different occasions.

“We talk about the concept of ‘breaking the hip.’ Most GAA players will turn their full body around when somebody goes by them which means the opposing player coming at you, once he gets his hip an inch past your hip, you’re beaten, you’re gone.

“So it’s understanding how to keep your hip maybe a foot or two on the goal side and it’s all about foot movement or balance and how you plant your one foot to allow you to do a drop step with the other foot.

“Some players go in for physical pressure on the ball carrier when they should have gone for standing pressure.

“And that standing pressure means he’s going to make that opponent make a decision so he is not going in to meet the ball at all.

“So players have to understand, ‘When do I coax pressure, when do I chase pressure, when do I close pressure’; all these pressures are applied and they all need different footwork.”

It was the type of detail he always sought to bring to Galway and hopes now it can stand to them as they seek to lift themselves on to the next level under Pádraic Joyce.

Walsh, by his own admission, was coach first, manager second and that’s a distinction that he feels will become clearer in time at the highest levels.

“It has come to the point where if you have any chance of winning, you have got to be coaching at a high level.

“In my own time, it (manager’s role) wouldn’t be coaching at a high level, it would be getting fit, organisation.

“Things have moved on in the coaching field so I don’t think that a manager can be a head coach and manager,” he reasons.

For Walsh, there is confidence that such a next step isn’t far away and, based on results over the last three years, Galway have every entitlement to be at the head of the chasing pack.

‘We have been right up there and bettering other teams and I am putting Kerry in that too’

“I always say you do your end-ofyear accounts and you look back on your term and of the top teams Galway have beaten, it includes Mayo and Donegal and being relatively level with Tyrone. We have been right up there and bettering other teams and I am putting Kerry in that too.

“We are pointing in that direction and we are in amongst them now, there is no questioning that. It requires another step forward now.

“The guys in their mid 20s have taken over leadership now and bringing through other young guys; once that is managed quite well no reason why a massive effort can’t be mounted.

“Of course there is enough there and there is full proof there is enough there since 2018 through to earlier this year. Even that 2018 All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin, we had opportunities to be three to five points ahead at half-time.

“It wasn’t a case that we were stuck in a defensive mode like people were saying, the opportunities were there, 18 scorable chances to 12 in the first half, three goal chances including a penalty which was saved.”

Walsh admitted it was quite a pull to leave the group of players when he did but more was pointing to the exit than keeping him there, he acknowledged, pointing to the five-year cycle that would have taken Galway back to New York in May, had there been no suspension of activities.

“The manager (role) has gone so heavy, all the other stuff takes time away from coaching. I have 10 years done, you need that break, other managers are there years but maybe they haven’t done all the coaching.” Grow Coach will host a second live webinar from 8pm on Monday, July 13