Money, Dublin and the GAA

Started by IolarCoisCuain, October 04, 2016, 07:27:37 PM

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Rossfan

Dublin will hardly go back to sloppy amateurishness so the obvious thing is split it into its Council areas and make it a Provibce.
Davy's given us a dream to cling to
We're going to bring home the SAM

Hound

Quote from: Dinny Breen on August 13, 2019, 02:39:35 PM

Very interesting article on Dublin's GDO structures. I see Gregory McGonigle says its factor, any Dubs prepared to argue against the funding making a difference now. He of course recognises all the other advantages too.
Thanks Dinny. That's an excellent article. The facts in that are the absolute truth. The opinions we can all argue with, but great to get a balanced article with actual facts.

Kilmacud Crokes are a beast of a club, although to take them as an example of what goes on in every club in Dublin would be very wishful thinking. Pauric McDonald is obviously brilliant  at what he he does, and is money very well spent by the Kilmacud members.

To take the part-quote you did from McGonigle as the bit to bold is a little bit odd given everything else he says. Bear in mind McGonigle is sitting beside Mcdonald when he says of course GDO's play a part. But the statement he makes immediately afterwards about there being bad GDOs out there is very pointed! You can be very lucky and get someone nearly as good as McDonald, but the truth is they're few and far between. McGonigle had 3 lads in and around the Dublin scene and he knows (as I know) that GDOs had absolutely nothing to do with their development. As he said about Archer "That score wasn't the product of a GDO or an AIG or any culture I created. He just has a work ethic, a willingness to learn and a love of the game. "

I went to a coach the coach session run by our GDO who showed us some slides inside, and then brought us outside and did some handpassing drills with a football and a sliothar (we were all parents mainly in our 40s). And then we were on our way, al tooled up to teach the masses!

To say GDOs make zero impact to elite players at every club is clearly wrong (although they absolutely do make zero impact on elite players at some clubs), but either way it's way down the list to the real reasons why Dublin have improved so much in the last decade. As the lads said, these are the key messages:

McGONIGLE: the population base is the big advantage. For every good GDO like a Paraic McDonald, you can have a bad GDO. For a Derry or Monaghan to have a good county team, you need every club to produce a county player. In Dublin it only has to be one in every three clubs.

Maurs to me are more like a rural club. Yet they've brought through a Ciaran Reddin. If Conor Maguire was in Monaghan he'd be on their county panel. And now you have a Ciaran Archer. My two years with Maurs, he was the first man there and last man to leave, all the time with a bag of footballs. The weekend Conor McManus kicked that wonder point up in Omagh out by the sideline, Ciaran kicked a better point for us against St Brigid's in a league match out in Rush.

That score wasn't the product of a GDO or an AIG or any culture I created. He just has a work ethic, a willingness to learn and a love of the game.
And having good management teams at the top like Jim Gavin's or Pat Gilroy's helps. When you have success, everyone aspires. In the late '90s, early '00s, did everyone want to play for Dublin?

McDONALD: A huge emphasis went on in Dublin into the club nurseries. In Kilmacud we could have 100 kids coming into the nursery every year. And we are lucky that it's very parent-led. It's not like a Castleblaney where you are relying on ex-players to come back down and take teams. In Kilmacud if we get 100 kids coming in, we get about 50 parents willing to help out.

And of those 50 parents, typically only 10 of them will have had previous GAA experience. If five of them have played hurling to any decent level, that would be doing well. The vast majority are coming from different sports or non-sporting backgrounds or different countries.

At nursery level it's all about fun and introducing general sports skills and fundamental movements. Let them throw the ball! Don't worry if it's not a [proper] handpass. We would play a lot of Olympic handball with our underage groups. It's [embedding] pass and move. Hand-and-eye coordination. Catching skills. Footwork. It's non-contact. And it's fun!

McGONIGLE: In fairness, the standard of coaching in Dublin club football is excellent. The standard of volunteer coaching.

McDONALD: The Dublin development squads aren't better resourced than any other in the country but I know the people involved in their current U15 and U16 squads and the level of coaching those kids are getting exposed to is phenomenal. Just the level of attention to detail, the level of individual development they're getting.

Ger Lyons is overlooking them. Again, he's a volunteer, a teacher out in Lucan, but who has coached teams out in UCD with John Divilly and won Sigersons. I would have had him out in Crokes, taking a couple of the award level-one courses. It's the environment he creates, how he makes you feel.

It was the same with the likes of Dessie Farrell before that. Pat Gilroy has to be given huge credit for taking that side of the late noughties and turning them into All-Ireland winners. What Jim Gavin has done is clearly phenomenal. But you also had someone like Dessie at underage who brought on a lot of those lads.

McDONALD: When I first came down here, it would always have been said that the most talented kids in Dublin were primarily playing soccer. I don't think that's the case anymore. People can now see a pathway with Dublin GAA.

Paul Mannion could have been a top-class soccer player, playing League of Ireland or even across the water. At 15, 16, he was heading across to the northside two or three times a week to play with Belvedere, a big commitment. He made an Irish schools team. But at the same time Dessie Farrell got him involved with a development squad and clearly Paul responded to that.

McELWEE: I don't know if in other counties the coaches stay that long. We were with that group right from U14 up to U21. That's a long time of consistent development. And we worked so well together. Different people would come in alright at different stages. Noel McCaffrey would have been involved with north U14 development squads right up to the first minor All-Ireland final [2011] team. Same with [Alan] 'Nipper' McNally. Mick Galvin came in at U21, straight from the same school as Dessie. So there was a unity of purpose, no mixed messages.

McGONIGLE: From a county team point of view, for me the two biggest advantages Dublin have are a) they get to play most of their games in Croke Park; even at 21 Con O'Callaghan must know his way around the dressing rooms like he does his own bathroom and kitchen. And B) if you're a Dublin footballer, you're living and working in Dublin.
I'd often see Ryan Wylie in service stations along that road, coming the other way. By the time a boy like him or Tiernan McCann would be back in bed, it would be near midnight. For the Mayo boys it would be later again. Whereas if Jim Gavin starts training at 6.30, most of their players are back home by 9.30. To me that would be a big, big factor, that edge they have in terms of rest and recovery.

Even, say, with a Cork where most players are based in the county, there was a video the other day on social media of the commute Niamh Cotter, Áine O'Sullivan and Clare O'Shea have to make from the Beara peninsula for county training. That's near a five-hour round-trip. Whereas for James McCarthy to breeze in from Ballymun into DCU, that's no distance.
To be fair to Dublin, they'd also be paying minimal expenses on their management teams, whereas a county like Wicklow, bringing in a John Evans from Killorglin, it wouldn't.

McDONALD: When I first came to Dublin in the '90s, one of the big criticisms was that you didn't know from week to week when you had a game. And games were being called off willy-nilly. So people would always point to soccer where they had a programme of games laid out at the start of the year and by and large they stuck to it. So around then they [Dublin GAA] put in a full-time person to look at games programme.

The result is now that teams are guaranteed a minimum of 16 to 18 games. In football alone. This is a dual county, so it's football one week, hurling the next. I think that's been a huge factor in the improvement in Dublin football. It's very difficult to get a game called off.

Even without the county players, the league is still competitive. They aren't meaningless games. You don't want to get relegated. You're out to get quality games to develop the next generation of player.

McGONIGLE: In Monaghan, Caoimhe Mohan was the poster girl, an All-Star in 2013 at just 20. Left foot, right foot, she had it all. She's not playing county football anymore. Since I left in 2013, they've had five different managers. Whereas in that time Dublin have had just two.

People don't like to admit it but other counties are being mismanaged. The financial mismanagement in Galway has been widely reported. Derry have appointed three treasurers in four years. Kerry ladies football has loads of good players but the structures aren't right at the top and there's a lot of internal fighting. Dublin are an example of good governance.

McELWEE: It's not Dublin's fault that they are where they are. That's the challenge for all other counties, to come up to that level. And that level is achievable because of the talent in other counties. The work Kerry have been doing at underage is phenomenal; they're going to win All-Irelands again. Galway have loads of good footballers. Mayo, Tyrone, those counties aren't going to go away. Cork are going to come back strong. Dublin's dominance will end.

McGONIGLE: You go through the Dublin team of the last decade, most of those players would have been playing GAA anyway with their family backgrounds. The funding factor might only be kicking in now. So it has to be rolled out to more counties. But it's up to clubs and counties to be proactive. In Dungiven we've appointed a full-time coaching officer. Instead of spending thousands on an outsider to take the senior team, invest in a coaching officer to produce your next Ciaran Archer.


Falcao

That is a good balanced article, some good information. I'm sure McGonigle would also agree that the games development funding is also having a positive impact for other counties as well, seeing as Dublin receive approx 18% of the total GDF funds each year.

Quote
McGONIGLE: To say the [games development] funding hasn't been a contributing factor would be wrong. But the population base is the big advantage. For every good GDO like a Paraic McDonald, you can have a bad GDO. For me, it's a numbers game. I remember once hearing that Russian boxing only needs one in 10,000 to become a world contender whereas Ireland needs one in every five. For a Derry or Monaghan to have a good county team, you need every club to produce a county player. In Dublin it only has to be one in every three clubs.

Maurs to me are more like a rural club. Yet they've brought through a Ciaran Reddin. If Conor Maguire was in Monaghan he'd be on their county panel. And now you have a Ciaran Archer.

My two years with Maurs, he was the first man there and last man to leave, all the time with a bag of footballs. The weekend Conor McManus kicked that wonder point up in Omagh out by the sideline, Ciaran kicked a better point for us against St Brigid's in a league match out in Rush. Our video analyst had it clipped and everything but we decided not to put it up on social media, that he didn't need to be put on a pedestal at that stage.

That score wasn't the product of a GDO or an AIG or any culture I created. He just has a work ethic, a willingness to learn and a love of the game.

And having good management teams at the top like Jim Gavin's or Pat Gilroy's helps. When you have success, everyone aspires. In the late '90s, early '00s, did everyone want to play for Dublin?

Quote
McDONALD: The development squads would have started in '98. I remember sitting around the same table as Kevin Heffernan who was chairing the steering group to help get them up and running. At the time we would have been well behind the likes of Laois who would have had Sean Dempsey bringing through the Beano [McDonald] teams.

Quote
McDONALD: A huge emphasis went on in Dublin into the club nurseries. In Kilmacud we could have 100 kids coming into the nursery every year. And we are lucky that it's very parent-led. It's not like a Castleblaney where you are relying on ex-players to come back down and take teams. In Kilmacud if we get 100 kids coming in, we get about 50 parents willing to help out.

And of those 50 parents, typically only 10 of them will have had previous GAA experience. If five of them have played hurling to any decent level, that would be doing well. The vast majority are coming from different sports or non-sporting backgrounds or different countries.

Quote
McDONALD: There's a real coaching culture in Dublin now, similar to what Ulster had when I was coming through, playing football. It comes back down to the quality of people you have involved.

The Dublin development squads aren't better resourced than any other in the country but I know the people involved in their current U15 and U16 squads and the level of coaching those kids are getting exposed to is phenomenal. Just the level of attention to detail, the level of individual development they're getting.

Ger Lyons is overlooking them. Again, he's a volunteer, a teacher out in Lucan, but who has coached teams out in UCD with John Divilly and won Sigersons. I would have had him out in Crokes, taking a couple of the award level-one courses. It's the environment he creates, how he makes you feel.

Quote
McELWEE: Everyone thinks 'Oh, they're only half an hour away from training.' It takes an hour to get across the M50!

25 September 2016; Dublin manager Gregory McGonigle during the Ladies Football All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final match between Cork and Dublin at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
25 September 2016; Dublin manager Gregory McGonigle during the Ladies Football All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final match between Cork and Dublin at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
When I finished my time with the Dublin U21s [the 2017 All-Ireland], we were still always begging for places to train, borrowing pitches off clubs. You could end up not training until nine o'clock, waiting for a club team to finish training, so you could borrow the use of their lights. So not everything was straightforward.

Should Dublin have a centre of excellence? Of course they should. Almost every other county in Ireland has. But at the same time that was part of building the grit. When you could be out in St Anne's in the snow and sleet on the side of a mountain because their club was kind enough to facilitate you. You mightn't get back home until 11.30 yet you'd see the boys out there and there wouldn't be a complaint.

Quote
People don't like to admit it but other counties are being mismanaged. The financial mismanagement in Galway has been widely reported. Derry have appointed three treasurers in four years. Kerry ladies football has loads of good players but the structures aren't right at the top and there's a lot of internal fighting. Dublin are an example of good governance.

seafoid

Quote from: Rossfan on August 13, 2019, 04:47:22 PM
Dublin will hardly go back to sloppy amateurishness so the obvious thing is split it into its Council areas and make it a Provibce.
the Irish for province is cúige which means there used to be 5 of them so Dublin as a 5th province would be nothing new
"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

Rossfan

Davy's given us a dream to cling to
We're going to bring home the SAM

manfromdelmonte

The reason for problems and turnover in county officers in most other counties is that the officers spend their time trying to fundraise or balance the books
Fundraising is a full time, year round operation just to keep going

Dublin don't have that issue

From the Bunker

Great to see this one in a generation team get to a final again today and begin to dominate.

First we have a one in a generation mens team now the ladies.

Feck the volunteers in Dublin must be dynamite!


lenny

Quote from: From the Bunker on August 26, 2019, 12:16:16 AM
Great to see this one in a generation team get to a final again today and begin to dominate.

First we have a one in a generation mens team now the ladies.

Feck the volunteers in Dublin must be dynamite!

What about the hurlers, the u20s and the u17s? They mustn't be getting any money.  The hurlers won leinster in 2013 and should've kicked on if money was the magic bullet.

Rossfan

Hurling is a minority game in Dublin.
For 50 years or more Dublin hurlers were about the same level as Antrim or Laois till this decade.
They've won Leinster Senior, u21 and Minor titles and a NHL this decade do the extra €€€€s have obviously helped.
Davy's given us a dream to cling to
We're going to bring home the SAM

Farrandeelin

Quote from: Rossfan on August 26, 2019, 10:02:56 AM
Hurling is a minority game in Dublin.
For 50 years or more Dublin hurlers were about the same level as Antrim or Laois till this decade.
They've won Leinster Senior, u21 and Minor titles and a NHL this decade do the extra €€€€s have obviously helped.

Exactly. Plus a fair few good hurlers opt for the football because of this.
Inaugural Football Championship Prediction Winner.

Hound

Quote from: Rossfan on August 26, 2019, 10:02:56 AM
Hurling is a minority game in Dublin.
For 50 years or more Dublin hurlers were about the same level as Antrim or Laois till this decade.
They've won Leinster Senior, u21 and Minor titles and a NHL this decade do the extra €€€€s have obviously helped.

A concerted effort in almost every club to give hurling an equal footing. I never picked up a hurl at my club when I played. Now it's given equal treatment at the start.
Creates a lot of political unrest in many clubs, with all these culchies demanding equal rights!

With our population, success won't be far away. We were sent back a good 3 or 4 years through the incompetence of Ger Cunningham and we need a couple of stars to come along, but we're not that far away from the top table.

I know people love the red herring of the games development funding, so it's pointless debating.

Rossfan

Red herring
Coincidence
C'mon Longford volunteers pull up ye're socks!!
Davy's given us a dream to cling to
We're going to bring home the SAM

Hound

Quote from: Rossfan on August 26, 2019, 11:31:31 AM
Red herring
Coincidence
C'mon Longford volunteers pull up ye're socks!!
Have Longford got a big population they've been hiding, or are you just talking mindless nonsense?

From the Bunker

Quote from: Hound on August 26, 2019, 11:33:21 AM
Quote from: Rossfan on August 26, 2019, 11:31:31 AM
Red herring
Coincidence
C'mon Longford volunteers pull up ye're socks!!
Have Longford got a big population they've been hiding, or are you just talking mindless nonsense?

What has population got to do with it? Bringing in population is like counting the number of buses!