Shocking shortage

Garrigan warns of major implications

FORMER Kilkenny hurling coach Michael Dempsey challenged the clubs in attendance at the recent county board meeting in Ballinakill to provide 15 coaches to the academy squads to help improve the future of Wicklow football.

Currently there is a shocking lack of coaches with the academy squads with Paul Garrigan appealing to club delegates at the February county board meeting that clubs send forward volunteers to allow the GDAs implement plans for all the teams in the academy.

However, Garrigan revealed that only one person put themselves forward after last month’s meeting and he issued a dire warning that coaching plans will not be able to be fulfilled if coaches do not put themselves forward.

‘From the last meeting when I was here requesting help, we got one response, one coach responded to it in the whole county, one coach in the whole county. We’ve a brilliant plan devised by the guys in Croke Park but we can’t run it because we don’t have the coaches,’ said Paul Garrigan.

‘We’re trying to educate the coaches that they’re going back to their clubs as better coaches. But, unfortunately, we won’t be able to do this when we don’t have any coaches.

‘We had a parents’ meeting the other night, with under-15 parents. We have currently 45 players at under-15. We currently have two coaches. That leaves us in a position of barely going to match with one team where we should be going with three teams.

‘I’d again urge you to go back to your clubs and ask if there are people in this area who can help out because, unfortunately, we won’t be able to deliver on this plan if we don’t get the help,’ he added.

Michael Dempsey said that ‘infuencers’ in the county needed to get together to get this situation sorted for the betterment of Wicklow football overall.

‘I don’t know who the influencers are in this room but you need to get your heads together. Our best coaches should ideally be working with our young people because that’s our most important resource,’ said the Laois native.

‘So, if you look at Wicklow at the moment as a pyramid, with the county team at the top and they are performing well, have improved, results are better. If you can improve the base, and improve the quality of player who is coming through, the top of that triangle actually gets higher. Your inter-county team automatically becomes higher but your club structure is also stronger.

‘What I would suggest is that you need to get a few people together to go talk to people, not picking up the phone, you need to sit down in front of somebody and say that if you help us out we’ll support your development as a coach, because what research is telling us is one of the reasons that people get involved in coaching is because it promotes their own development. So, if Wicklow are going after coaches, you also need to have ‘this is what we’ll do for you to improve you as a coach within the system’.

‘What happens in most counties is that we get someone and then they’re left isolated in a silo completely on their own with a team. We don’t support them, don’t improve them from an educational point of view and one of the biggest issues in most counties is that we don’t actually appreciate them.

‘I think you need to put a plan in place in terms of how you’re going to recruit people, what you’re offering them when they come in and when you have them in the system how you actually treat these people. It’s too important to Wicklow going forward not to address the issues that Paul is talking about.

Michael Sargent suggested that the travel requirements might be an issue for potential coaches and that regional squads might encourage more coaches to volunteer.

‘It’s a win-win situation as regards logistics in that if you have a regional squad you are going to get coaches and players,’ said Paul Garrigan. ‘But the big thing here is you’re trying to expose inter-county training to a larger base. You cannot make a call on a 13-, 14-, 15-, 16- or possibly a 17-year-old but if you have more of them in the system you have more of a chance of getting the player at inter-county senior level. If we start with 30 players at under-14 in Wicklow in 2020 there is very little chance of us having a lot of them players playing for Wicklow in six or seven years’ time,’ he said.

A delegate suggested that many good football people were being turned off getting involved because of the pro forma type of industry that coaching courses have become.

Michael Dempsey said that what was needed was for more informal coach education to take place in the club itself because people were volunteers and they were coming under pressure with time and that the system needed to be brought to the coaches.

Michael Sargent pondered on how a club would keep the coaching bar as high as the academy squad standard for young players coming back from those squads.

‘What we’re recommending is that anybody who is coaching at academy squad level will need to do a specific short course to make sure that they understand what academy squads are about; that it’s about developing the player for the club,’ said Michael Dempsey.

‘So, the message that the player gets when he comes into the academy squad is that he keeps his feet on the ground, when you go back to the club you put in the effort, you’re not an inter-county player, we’re here to make you a better player.

‘The second point on that is that if we can get club coaches to come in and observe some of what’s happening; if Paul is with an academy team in Wicklow, if he’s able to ring up the club coach and say: ‘Johnny is weak off his left leg, we’ve been doing some work with him, will you continue to do it.’ Now the player is getting the message from Paul at academy squad level but he’s also getting it from his club coach so now it is still challenging for him when he goes back to the club. We just need to work better together,’ he said.

Michael Dempsery asked how many clubs were in attendance on the night and he was informed that it was 30-odd.

‘If 15 of the clubs here could provide one person to the academy squads that would solve a lot of the problems. So maybe the clubs here need to actually try and influence somebody in their club to help out, and that will make them a better coach in their club,’ he said.