A FRESH APPROACH
Regional academies at under-14 to help boost football
LAOIS native and Kilkenny hurling coaching legend Michael Dempsey attended the recent Wicklow GAA county board meeting to give a talk in relation to the new Talent Academy report that has been published bytheGAA.
Dempsey, along with Wicklow GDA Paul Garrigan, addressed the delegates on the results of that report.
‘Approximately two years ago I got a phone call from John Horan asking me if I would chair a committee looking at talent academies because there was a lot of negative feedback with what was happening in that space: players losing the run of themselves, being put on a pedestal, maybe getting lots of gear, going back to the clubs, not really being part of the club scene. There were a lot of concerns about talent academies,’ he explained.
The committee chaired by Michael Dempsey had representatives from all four provinces sitting on it and two years from its conception the report has now been published. Dempsey explained that to do a ‘meaningful’ report meant visiting every county in the country because ‘the context in every county is completely different.’
‘We would have spoken to about 1,000 different stakeholders in all the counties; we would have gathered over 7,000 pieces of information and that formed the basis of our report. But, one thing I want to clarify from the very beginning is why we were set up. It’s called the Talent Academy report. While we were set up to look at talent academies, we felt we couln’t just look at talent academies in isolation, we needed to look at what was happening in the club and in the post primary schools because it’s the same player who travels to all of those.
‘In the GAA we have a habit of working in silos, thinking in silos, but we have to look at all the areas to find out what was going well and what wasn’t going so well,’ he added.
The positives
One of the main positives in most counties was facilities and we don’t have to look any further than ourselves here in terms of what’s actually happening in Wicklow. But excellent facilities all over the country, centre of excellence.
‘What was also a positive was exposure to good coaching and particularly the role of full-time staff in a lot of the counties. Parents, players and coaches were very complimentary of what full-time staff were doing.
‘Am I saying it was good everywhere? No. But these are some of the positives.
The Negatives
‘Moving along to where it wasn’t working so well, and this is where it got interesting, because clubs were giving out about the academy squads, clubs were giving out about the post primary sector in terms of fixtures, post primary were giving out about clubs and academy squads were giving out about clubs and post primary as well. So, everybody was giving out about each other but they had never sat down to discuss their issues and see how they would work together in the interests of the player because it was the same player they were actually talking about. But everybody was fighting for that player and only taking an interest in that player when he was involved in their team.
‘One player, who was playing across six different teams in hurling and football and was playing other sports said: ‘I only feel valued by my coach when I’m playing for his team.’ Because his coach only had an interest in him when he wanted him for training or when he wanted him for a match. But he didn’t care who else he was training with, what other matches he was playing or was he playing other sport, not to talk about his academic studies. That’s what we would have found out in most counties.
‘Some of the issues then, obviously there was fixtures, coach education, lack of a player pathway or framework was a huge issue,’ he said.
Dempsey then went on to state that: ‘you can’t say this is what you do with a 14-year-old, this is what you do with a 16-year-old because kids develop at different rates, so the old habit didn’t take into account
Photo by Harry Murphy/Sportsfile
the developmental, physical, social, psychological needs of the player. Everyone was classed according to age groups.’
‘The fixtures calendar was a huge issue in terms of overlap between club, post primary and sometimes with academy squads as well. So, there was a lot of negativity by all of the people as to what was actually happening in this space.’
The committee came up with four key recommendations:
‘Number one is that we develop a player framework which gives clarity as to what a player’s journey is.
‘One of the major recommendations we have made – because it’s impossible to pick out somebody at 14 years of age, even if they look like the real deal at that age. In a lot of cases those very good young players do not actually transition to senior, adult inter-county or maybe even to club. So, identifying someone at 14 and putting them on a pedestal, we believe, is harmful to their development.
‘What we’re actually suggesting, where up to now counties might just have one academy squad at under-14, which was basically seen by the coaches as the inter-county team, we are now recommending that that base is actually widened so that more young people get an opportunity to be part, playing against better players to support their development, and to give them better coaching. Because we don’t actually know who is going to make it at that stage. So, what we’re recommending is that counties will operate on a regional basis at under-14 level. So, it will no longer be one squad. If you take Wicklow for instance, it could be east and west, or it could be broken into four areas, so more players, or practically anybody who wants to play at that level will be given an opportunity to play games. It’s more like playing games, some coaching and it’s about a lot of sports science input,’ said Dempsey.
Delegates were then shown a video that highlighted the processes recommended by the committee.
‘As you can hear from the video, we believe the GAA needs to prioritise the club, that’s where 99 per
cent of the players reside. Only one percent of those players will move to the elite level of the GAA. What we were conscious of from our consultation is that there is a huge commercialisation of the GAA, huge money being spent on the inter-county scene, huge focus on it, issues with fixtures, and we need to make sure that our young players are not exposed to the same type of treatment that happens at that level.
‘We can’t influence what happens at the elite level oftheGAA.Weneedtomakesurewearetruetoour values in terms of a player pathway and we need to cater for the 99 per cent (of players),’ he said.
Michael Dempsey and Paul Garrigan then highlighted a text message sent by an underage coach to parents in a county in Leinster that described a training regime that attempted to instill an elite type of coaching system into an under-14 team preparing for Féile.
‘The question we need to ask ourselves is: what end do we want to mind for all of our young players coming through the system? And I would suggest and it’s part of our recommendations, it to keep them in the game, and to make sure they play adult with their clubs. So, we need to take a long-term view of how we deal with our young players in terms of making it enjoyable, having a player-centered approach, where coaching is based on the individual needs of the player. If we have that approach then we have a much better chance of keeping them in the game. Because the drop out, 55 per cent of our young players between the ages of 16 and 19 actually drop out of playing our games. Obviously, some drop out will happen in every sport but we have to ask the question; why is that drop out figure so high?
Michael Dempsey then explained why people needed to work together and why we need to change how we coach young people.
‘I hear a lot of people giving out about young people these days, and I work in the IT in Carlow and I’m lucky enough to be dealing with young people, because, in my opinion, young people are great. But they do happen to inhabit a very different sort of environment than when I was young. A lot more pressure now academically, a lot more social media, a lot of thing happening in their lives, a lot of expectation. A lot of expectation in sport, in life or whether it’s academic. So, there is much more pressure on our young people than there was years ago.
‘Young people identify themselves by what they do in life or where their friends are, and for a lot f young people they identify themselves by the sport they play, by being involved in sport. But if we don’t look after their needs and provide them with a very good environment, they also have lots of other identities they can move on to very easily; be it Facebook where they have maybe a few thousand friends, Instagram or wherever else.
‘So, if we don’t provide our young people with a good environment there are many more options out there where they can actually move onto and they will be very happy in that environment also. We have a huge challenge in terms of how we support our young people, and it’s not just the coaches, it’s the county board people, it’s the coaches, and it’s the parents, all of us working together, with the player and the game working together at the centre.
‘Do we really want change, that’s the big question? The hardest thing is to accept that we do need to change, that we need to change our culture and how wedoourbusiness,’hesaid.
Dempsey said that the report has now been adopted by Central Council and by Management and that new appointments would be made in the area of player pathway managers, sports science and coach education and that would be replicated at provincial level and possibly at county level.
‘You need to encourage people to get involved in the academy squads where they will be given individualised support and educational opportunities which they can then bring back to their clubs to improve their own players.
‘We see the purpose of the academy squads, basically, as making players better for their clubs. For the ones who are lucky enough to go on and make it, that’s different, but for the majority of kids who are in that space, our philosophy is to make them better for their clubs so that when they go back to their clubs they’re a better player and they can added to everyone else in their club,’ he added.