The ultimate aim for a GAA coach is to have all 15 players working in harmony

Team Play - Developing team play in players is another essential element of the Total Playing Performance coaching model.

Some sports e.g. snooker are individual games and do not require team play skills.

The ultimate aim of the GAA coach is to have all 15 players on the pitch working in harmony with each other.

Great teams have similar core values where the team is always more important than any individual.

Managers are often heard praising the efforts of all members of their panel in the aftermath of games rather than singling out one or two individuals. Brian Cody and his management team take ‘sacred time’ alone with the team after matches where everyone gets the same credit for their role in the team’s performance.

Subs are thanked for their efforts prior to the game where they challenged the starting 15 players. Players are constantly reassured by the management team that every player will get an equal opportunity to claim a starting place for the next game.

Cooperation and Interdependence are other words used to describe team work and team play. The Dalai Lama is quoted as saying, “Cooperation comes from friendship, friendship comes from trust and trust comes from kind heartedness”.

Historically, Irish people knew what cooperation meant. The ‘Meitheal’, where all the community rallied to help each other with their harvest, was team play at its very best.

The Celtic Tiger brought more commodities, making people independent of each other and therefore we now see very few instances of team play and cooperation in any area of society.

We, the present generation, live in a highly competitive world where the majority of people operate as individuals.

In most cases, children have enough food, books, clothes, shoes, toys and games and are not dependent on any other children to share with them.

The media has created a world of stars where people try to be better than everyone else and where only the very best are successful.

The sports media are always looking for the next ‘big thing’. The Man of the Match award can often be seen as a bigger prize than what team won the game. This culture makes it very difficult for coaches to try to instil values of team play into players.

Often, when people analyse how Kilkenny play hurling, they comment on how physical, aggressive and competitive they are. What many fail to mention is, how cooperative they are.

A Kilkenny player will always pass the ball to a player in a better position. That is the golden rule of their team. Every Kilkenny player will pass the ball to every other Kilkenny player. This does not happen in the majority of teams in Ireland.

A team is defined as, ‘A collection of individuals with complementary skills’.

They do not all need to have the same skills. It is unlikely that a team of all the same players would be successful.

Looking at the Dublin team, Cian O’Sullivan, Paul Flynn, Bernard Brogan, Paul Mannion and Dean Rock all have different skills. Brogan and Rock will be the main scorers while Flynn will run endlessly up and down the field to assist in attack and defence. Jim Gavin really has his players playing as a team at present. Like Brian Cody, he had to only pick players who were committed to the team.

At Youth and Adult level, team play is required for:

1: Tactics - All members of the team need to play a certain way in order to gain an advantage over the opposition.

2: Anticipation – Top team players can anticipate what their team mates will do next.

3: Creating Space in Attack – Players will often sacrifice their own chances of scoring to make more space for the player in possession.

4: Denying Space in Defence – All players work together to ensure that the opposition gets minimal space when they attack.

5: Support Play – Team players make lots of runs in support of the player in possession

Team play involves high levels of communication between players and between management and players.

Team Play for Children - Children are naturally competitive. When a ball is thrown in between two teams, children are experts at keeping the score and knowing the winning team.

Coaches generally do not have to do anything to make children more competitive other than playing competitive games.

The challenge for coaches is to get children to co-operate with their team mates so they can play better as a team. One of the best ways to introduce players to team play is through playing cooperative games.

Cooperative Games - Cooperative games are played by making teams of two or more players. Generally there is no opposition.

All players on the team are dependent on the other members to perform the task. A simple co-operative game would be when players have to kick a ball over and back to each other.

The challenge is to get 10 catches in a row without the ball hitting the ground. This game might seem so simple but if a coach can devise cooperative games where every player on his team has to play with everyone else over a few sessions that will help them to develop team play skills. As players become more used of playing with each other, the coach can come up with more games that involve more concentration or that is challenging to their skills.

Coaches should encourage their players to pass the ball to their team mates and that good passing is an essential skill.

By making players aware of the amount of quality passes top players make, this can encourage children to pass to their team mates.

In 2015 Lionel Messi made over 80 passes per game in the Champions League. Everyone know that Messi is a top scorer but very few mention that he is a top passer.

In the last 10 years Henry Shefflin was one of Kilkenny’s top scorers. In that time he has also made the most tackles and completed the most passes in Kilkenny.

These are great examples for our children and when coaches can teach their players that the top scorers are also the top passers, children will want to become better team players.