Listowel man undertaking academic research into bilateral skills
A FORMER Listowel Emmets footballer is considering carrying out further studies of bilateral skills in Gaelic football, having already undertaken extensive research on the subject as part of his Masters in Sport Performance at University of Limerick (UL).
Last October, Karol Dillon submitted a dissertation investigating attitudes towards bilateral skills in elite Gaelic football, and also looked into the factors affecting development of these skills. Dillon, from Listowel, outlined in his submission that this was the first such study that had been carried out at this level of the game. While he did cite studies carried into other sports at the outset of his dissertation, he pointed out that this particular study differed from those in that it gave participants the opportunity to share their own experiences and perspectives.
“The limitation in those studies was that they were qualitative, they were very black and white and based on video analysis,” he told The Kerryman. “I don’t think they had the nuance that this study had, which looked into matters including the effect it has on the team when a player depends on one side.”
Dillon – who played with Emmets up to senior level, and with Feale Rangers at underage level – did, however, acknowledge that his own study had its limitations as he depended on the participants’ recollections. Now, he is interested in seeing for himself what’s happening on the ground.
“What I can say is that me, UL, and [supervisor] Phil Kearney are looking into a PhD, and the area we’d like to look at is what is happening in development squads,” he said. “We’d also be looking at quantitative analysis, in this case, video analysis. What I’d like to say is that anyone who participated in this study was very kind with their time, and I think that reflects very well on them. And I’d also stress that, when you hear how hard they work, you think to yourself, fans give these fellas too hard a time!”
YOU know the drill. It’s the one Barcelona made famous: ‘The Rondo’. A group of players gather around a tight square or circle and knock the ball to one another while a smaller group buzzes around the middle, trying to disrupt the passing. Every attribute a soccer player has – bar shooting – is tested. It’s effective, it’s simple, but how would some GAA coaches and players react to something as straightforward as this?
“Rondos are the most basic drill, they’re done day after day,” says Listowel man Karol Dillon. “Why is it sufficient for them, for multi-millionaire athletes, but something as basic as that could be frowned upon in the GAA?”
As part of his Masters in Sport Performance at University of Limerick (UL), Dillon carried out a dissertation study in which he investigated attitudes to bilateral skills amongst 19 elite Gaelic footballers and coaches. Some had encountered that lack of respect for simplicity, and cited it as a challenge to developing bilateral competence – but there were many other obstacles.
And they were stubborn obstacles, too; a lot has stood in the way of even the best of the best playing comfortably off their weaker side.
A paradox shone through the findings as well: when a player struggles on their weaker side, the knock-on effect seeps into game plans and cuts the options available to team-mates. Players and coaches know this; they even target it when they identify it in their opposition.
But are they doing enough themselves to turn the point where they’re weakest into a weapon?
Background
DILLON is a Listowel native whose playing experience has seen him line out for the Emmets from underage to senior, as well as for Feale Rangers at underage.
Professionally, he spent 10 years as a primary-school teacher – the last seven of which were in Duagh – during which time he says he found his niche was in coaching. He was involved with Feale Rangers’ backroom in 2019, and he now occupies a back-room role at Killarney Legion.
When he decided to leave his teaching position and take on a Masters at UL last January, he had already developed a keen interest in bilateral competence, the topic he pursued through his dissertation; past observations helped lead him to this point – the submission of a study which, he hopes, will serve as more than just food for thought.
“I was involved previously with the Feale Rangers senior backroom, and there was an emphasis on bilateral play and the non-dominant side. That really raised my radar on the issue,” he says.
“I’d also noticed through my under-age coaching, for instance, that the best children, when it came to kicking with both legs, were doing athletics with their local athletics club on a Saturday morning – they stood out like a sore thumb.
“I used to put kids standing two metres from a wall, kicking a ball against it, doing it as fast as they could. And as they were doing it, they had to switch legs each time. It was re-wiring the brain, essentially, getting them to kick off their weak leg without thinking.”
Dillon was offered more than a dozen potential titles for his dissertation, and he selected one which gave him breathing space to investigate where such skills stand within the game’s priorities. The initial vision was of a study derived mainly from video analysis, and he hadn’t expected that the respondents would be from the so-called elite end of the sport – but, thanks in no small part to contacts he made during his time playing and coaching, further options made themselves known.
“It was becoming clear after a few weeks that these guys [top-level footballers and coaches] were willing to meet me or be interviewed, and it would have been a shame not to do it that way while the opportunity was there,” he says.
The process
A DISSERTATION doesn’t just happen. It’s not something you just type out – or at least it shouldn’t be. The cornerstones of Dillon’s thesis are 19 individual interviews – between 26 and 84 minutes in length – and the respondents each fell into one of three distinct groups.
Due to academic ethics, Dillon cannot identify the respondents, but can outline their high standing within the sport. Category One, for instance, contained six players aged between 21 and 26, and all had either trained or played at senior inter-county level. All had won All-Ireland medals at different levels, while one respondent had an All Star. Dillon chose these players as they had come through development squads in their respective counties.
Eight players aged between 32 and 45 made up Category
Two, and all had inter-county experience and multiple All-Ireland medals through the grades. They were chosen for having experienced life under multiple inter-county managers, and development squad systems which were less structured or, for some, non-existent.
The final group contained five coaches, all of whom had experience of coaching a senior Division 1 county. Some had also coached at minor or under-21 inter-county level.
“Each interview involved two days’ transcription – I wasn’t the fastest – and even that was only the foundation,” Dillon says. “Then you had to go back and analyse each interview to find common themes and threads.
“The level of transcribing involved was desperate, but I’m glad I did it that way because I was familiarising myself with the material.
“I could have gone with questionnaires, but that wouldn’t have lent itself to the nuance and subtlety of their answers, and the approaches the coaches, particularly, have taken to improve the non-dominant side.”
The aim of the exercise was to gain an understanding of attitudes towards bilateral skill symmetry and the factors affecting the development of bilateral skills. Dillon now had the respondents’ views and, under the guidance of supervisor Phil Kearney, set about shaping his dissertation around their thoughts.
The paradox
BEING comfortable off both sides doubles your options – and if you’re a corner back and marking someone who could jink either way, that’s double the trouble.
If you’re an inter-county player and you don’t have bilateral competence in your armoury, your opposition will know. They’ve analysed you, and they’ll target it.
And it’s not just about you, the player on the ball. It limits what your team mate can do to support you. If you’re weak on one side, their options are limited. They might not be able to make the run that should be most profitable to them – because they can’t profit at all if you can’t deliver.
“One guy told me that he had two right-sided players in midfield, and the knock-on effect of that transferred across one half of the pitch,” Dillon recalls.
“Another guy mentioned a pass that was made, but had he made it off his non-dominant side, there may have been a goal on. That’s
the kind of subtlety I’m talking about that we uncovered here.
“But I also think it’s such a paradox that one of the respondents told me how long they spent on video analysis of opposition, weeks before a game, and they know exactly what side players are dominant on – but how much were they practicing it [non-dominant improvement] themselves?
“I spoke to one respondent who told me about all the analysing they did ahead of a certain game, and I put it to them that it stands to reason that the opposition were doing the same to them… and, I swear to God, it was like I’d sent him to the moon. Stomached. Flabbergasted.”
And that’s the paradox: a clear and nuanced understanding amongst the best players and coaches of why bilateral play matters but, often, a shortfall in time spent addressing their own weakness in that area.
It’s important to note that that’s not quite a universal problem. There is evidence that some things have changed, while others are changing and will continue to change.
One coach told Dillon that, during the two years he spent coaching a senior county team, 20 minutes of each session focussed on bilateral skills. One of the players remarked that “Everything is based on working on the weaknesses or the so-called weaknesses so we would have been at least 50/50, if not 60/40, in favour of the weak side.”
These are not isolated examples, either.
But, too often, the paradox exists even at the top – so where does it come from?
Where things can go wrong
SOME respondents spoke of ‘positive’ team environments that encouraged self-expression and risk-taking. This kind of set-up was seen as beneficial when it came to developing bilateral skills. On the other hand, you won’t always find yourself in such an environment.
While video and statistical analysis, for instance, surely must have their place as the sport continues to mature, it appears that backroom teams need to find balance.
“Twelve years ago, like, giving away possession then wasn’t as bad as giving away possession today,” one player told Dillon. “Now it’s the end of the earth… that was the worst thing about stats coming in. If you gave away two balls, it was worse than getting no possession at all.”
“I wouldn’t have been chancing kick passing 50 yards with it [the weak leg], it wouldn’t have been a risk worth taking,” another player said. “If I got it right, no response; wrong, negative response.”
We’ve already pointed to a lack of respect for simplicity amongst some, and that’s seemingly another issue standing in the way of bilateral skills being improved:
“I would say the players themselves would not have the time for that type of drill because it’s not complicated,” one player said. “Simplicity is not respected anymore.”
“I think players have been brainwashed as regards complexity at inter-county level, they want bells and whistles on everything,” a coach agreed. “I think if a coach rocks up and he’s just doing simple stuff, they are going to say this is a load of crap.”
“I think there’s a lack of nerve amongst coaches,” Dillon says. “They’re not backing themselves.
“If I go in with a senior team, I know it’s a basic drill, but we’re doing it, because the end goal is to improve your kicking and hand-passing on your non-dominant side. That won’t improve with putting 50 cones out.
“The managers will have to take the hit. This will look appalling. Initially, you might be starting off with stationary kicking, one ball between two fellas. But then you build up. Players might laugh at the simplicity of it, but I’d turn around to them and ask them can they do it, can they master it?”
But even if you are part of a team that understands the importance of improving bilateral skills – and, to be fair, it seems the respondents are acutely aware of their value – that’s only part of the equation.
The football trumps everything
WHILE the respondents insisted that bilateral skills can be improved at any age, what happens during the developmental stage, at underage, does help – and therein lies a conundrum.
Volunteers are the engine behind the GAA, but they’re often not experts, and they may need guidance on the importance of bilateral skills, and methods of improving them, if these skills are to bed in at grassroots level.
And while several players did outline that coaches followed them from under-12 through to minor, this continuity wasn’t the norm, and even in cases where there was a relatively seamless transition through the grades, the ranking of bilateral skills on those coaches’ lists of priorities could vary greatly from person to person.
And, indeed, it seems that the same can be said of many senior inter-county set-ups, where matters such as bilateral skills can struggle in a tug-o’-war that won’t let up from one end of a season to the next. Skills might take precedence at times, but there’s no guarantee that the status quo will hold tough for the year.
“What I’d love to get across is that the actual amount of footballs in training should be emphasised more than any cones or ‘S&C’ programme, anything,” Dillon insists.
“Footballs should be seen as gold. The more footballs you have at a session, whether it’s under-10 or senior, the better. How can you improve a fella’s footballing ability with three footballs at a session if you’ve 25 fellas?
“Clubs will argue that it’s very expensive to buy 10 O’Neills footballs, and absolutely it is. But, number one, you can buy less-expensive training footballs, and then I’d ask how much is being spent elsewhere, such as on strength and conditioning?”
When revered strength-and-conditioning coach Dan John was asked about his athletes’ training, he said he stuck by an 80:20 principle – that is that only 20 per cent of their time should be spent on strength training.
“My throwers throw,” he wrote in Intervention. “For the record, my jumpers jump, and my sprinters sprint.”
But Dillon found that such philosophies were not always the norm for those who responded to his questions.
One player told him that a previous obsession he had with becoming stronger led to his skills suffering. Another pointed out that strength and fitness goals are more easily attained; the results are relatively immediate, and that immediacy can tempt players and coaches away from the bigger picture.
“But there’s no point in being able to run for ‘x’ amount of time if you can’t kick the ball straight,” Dillon says.
“Don’t get me wrong: you’d get eaten alive at inter-county level without strength and conditioning...But it shouldn’t be that a player is doing band work for an hour before training rather than going out kicking. If there’s to-ing and fro-ing over time at training, and the S&C side is winning, something is wrong.
“We are looking at psychologists, nutritionists, S&Cs, but the obvious question to ask is will we get a kicking coach in? The thesis shows that you can improve it at any age. It’s a cop out to say it can’t be done. Maybe you can improve more in your teenage years, but every single respondent said it’s not true that you can’t improve as you get older.”
Doing it right
WHEN it comes to studies like this, next to nothing is black or white. Where developing bilateral skills is concerned, things have gone wrong in the past, some things continue to go wrong, and even those who’re on the right track can, of course, improve. You can improve anything, after all.
But it’s important to acknowledge signs of things moving in the right direction.
“Corofin, 100 per cent, are an example I’d pick of a club that is clearly putting an emphasis on bilateral play,” Dillon says.
“There’s no question at interlevel, Dublin are the trend-setters on non-dominant play – and that’s not by accident. There’s no doubt they’re affording more time to non-dominant skills.
“And, from what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard, just my own observations, there seems to be a massive emphasis put on kicking within our development squads in Kerry, and I think that reflects very well on them.
“I see that in the way the fivein-a-row minors, year after year, were very balanced footballers, comfortable on both sides, and good decision makers.”
And some respondents – coaches – offered their thoughts on what needs to be done to get players to a level comparable to those positive examples mentioned.
One spoke of a club holding “under-12 internal leagues on non-dominant legs,” and while these didn’t make for pretty viewing initially, the players, he said, did benefit.
Another coach spoke of a method involving players carrying two footballs, one in each hand, thus forcing them to kick and solo off both legs, and pass and hop using both hands: “All of a sudden, you were arming them with two sides of their body to protect the ball, and that was something they became very adept at quickly.”
Another coach had even devised bilateral drills which aimed to limit instances of his players reverting to type under pressure. The coach in question attempted to replicate those pressurised moments by using a timer, starting blocks, and an opposition player to simulate a game situation.
Dillon feels that needs to be a core coaching objective as ‘reverting to type’ at high-octane moments can be a stumbling point even for those who’re proficient off both sides.
However best we can improve bilateral skills in the game, it’s going to have to start with a change in attitude for some, Dillons says – but he insists that coaches who make that change will be rewarded.
“From what I’ve heard, it’s a given that you should be two-sided in Tipperary with a hurley,” Dillon says.
“I understand that it’s not even being coached – it’s just accepted as a must. And I don’t think we’re at that point with football. That’s the mentality we have to change. If we keep go into training and working on our good side, that’s the equivalent of going into a gym and working on your strongest muscle every night.
“Sometimes managers lack patience, because skills training takes time. It depends on how open coaches are to improving themselves, but I think any coach who reads this would be silly to ignore it given the calibre of people talking here.
“This is 100 % an area where points can be clawed back by teams against the likes of Dublin, and it’s an area that wouldn’t cost a huge amount of money. Even the weaker counties, there’s very little stopping them aiming for this. Coaches and managers need to back themselves.
“Write down, at the start of the year, what you want to achieve, and that’s not just to win, but to make them better footballers – which, in turn, makes them more likely to win.”
Tadhg Evans spoke with Listowel man Karol Dillon about his masters dissertation on attitudes towards bilateral skills amongst elite Gaelic football players and coaches – and the factors affecting the development of those skills