Should a club pay for, or subsidise its coaching costs?

[Croí na hÉireann]

I presume the lads are talking about coaching courses. I think our foundation ones are free, but I know the Award 1 and Award 2 are more expensive. Now, that said I think it's €40 and €100 respectively.

The foundation one is €10 and is usually spread over 3 nights. Award 1 is €40 and is spread over 7 nights. Haven't done Award 2 yet.

And is the status quo to pay in full yourself?

Yes. Until you challenge it.

[munchkin]

this is all a bit mad.

A club would normally churn through thousands, maybe 10s of thousands in a year in various expenses. I know my club at home in Cavan were paying expenses to one lad flying home from England every weekend and to lads travelling up from Dublin and even Kerry (despite the fact that they'd be coming home at least every other weekend anyhow). There was physio expenses, outside trainers and I dont know what.

And if clubs are churning through such sums of cash, I'm stumped as to why they wouldn't cover €200 odd for a coaching course.
An outlay of 200 in order to get hundreds if not thousands of hours of volunteer coaching of your future members seems like a reasonably solid investment. 

[Dinny Breen]

So my own club in conjunction with a Games Development Officer set up a course(online and pitch) for all under age coaches, I do the u8s. It was football specific, so while some of the messages were good, participation and inclusivity, the rest was too technical and ignored completely the primary reason why kids play sport in the first place, fun, fun, fun. I genuinely believe that giving all these resources and courses is becoming counter productive. Listening to some Offaly hurling development officer talking on OTB recently about how his home club has only 70+ players aged 7-17 but has 90+ qualified coaches, he was bloody proud of this. The obsession in Irish sport of driving technical and tactical standards is not helping us win the battle, underage sport should only be about participation and fun. Majority of kids are competitive by nature, what you don't need are competitive coaches at underage. In my day, training consisted of a game, or backs against forwards with the odd technical drill thrown in around the hand-pass and the solo. Even now that's the basis of any underage or senior training session I take in any sport, conditioned small sided games. We need to stop blinding coaches with science.

If I was to sit down with a bunch of 8 year olds and design a session it would not consist of technical, mental or tactical components, certainly not in a deliberate drill designed sense, they would insist on fun and games with weird rules.

Anyway the whole thing annoyed me, and yes I did feed it back, but just wanted to write it down somewhere...

[trailer]

So my own club in conjunction with a Games Development Officer set up a course(online and pitch) for all under age coaches, I do the u8s. It was football specific, so while some of the messages were good, participation and inclusivity, the rest was too technical and ignored completely the primary reason why kids play sport in the first place, fun, fun, fun. I genuinely believe that giving all these resources and courses is becoming counter productive. Listening to some Offaly hurling development officer talking on OTB recently about how his home club has only 70+ players aged 7-17 but has 90+ qualified coaches, he was bloody proud of this. The obsession in Irish sport of driving technical and tactical standards is not helping us win the battle, underage sport should only be about participation and fun. Majority of kids are competitive by nature, what you don't need are competitive coaches at underage. In my day, training consisted of a game, or backs against forwards with the odd technical drill thrown in around the hand-pass and the solo. Even now that's the basis of any underage or senior training session I take in any sport, conditioned small sided games. We need to stop blinding coaches with science.

If I was to sit down with a bunch of 8 year olds and design a session it would not consist of technical, mental or tactical components, certainly not in a deliberate drill designed sense, they would insist on fun and games with weird rules.

Anyway the whole thing annoyed me, and yes I did feed it back, but just wanted to write it down somewhere...

Shane Smith on twitter is worth a follow. Ball. Inclusive. Chaos. Fun. Do it all again next week.

[Dinny Breen]

So my own club in conjunction with a Games Development Officer set up a course(online and pitch) for all under age coaches, I do the u8s. It was football specific, so while some of the messages were good, participation and inclusivity, the rest was too technical and ignored completely the primary reason why kids play sport in the first place, fun, fun, fun. I genuinely believe that giving all these resources and courses is becoming counter productive. Listening to some Offaly hurling development officer talking on OTB recently about how his home club has only 70+ players aged 7-17 but has 90+ qualified coaches, he was bloody proud of this. The obsession in Irish sport of driving technical and tactical standards is not helping us win the battle, underage sport should only be about participation and fun. Majority of kids are competitive by nature, what you don't need are competitive coaches at underage. In my day, training consisted of a game, or backs against forwards with the odd technical drill thrown in around the hand-pass and the solo. Even now that's the basis of any underage or senior training session I take in any sport, conditioned small sided games. We need to stop blinding coaches with science.

If I was to sit down with a bunch of 8 year olds and design a session it would not consist of technical, mental or tactical components, certainly not in a deliberate drill designed sense, they would insist on fun and games with weird rules.

Anyway the whole thing annoyed me, and yes I did feed it back, but just wanted to write it down somewhere...

Shane Smith on twitter is worth a follow. Ball. Inclusive. Chaos. Fun. Do it all again next week.

Cheers will look him up

[manfromdelmonte]

So my own club in conjunction with a Games Development Officer set up a course(online and pitch) for all under age coaches, I do the u8s. It was football specific, so while some of the messages were good, participation and inclusivity, the rest was too technical and ignored completely the primary reason why kids play sport in the first place, fun, fun, fun. I genuinely believe that giving all these resources and courses is becoming counter productive. Listening to some Offaly hurling development officer talking on OTB recently about how his home club has only 70+ players aged 7-17 but has 90+ qualified coaches, he was bloody proud of this. The obsession in Irish sport of driving technical and tactical standards is not helping us win the battle, underage sport should only be about participation and fun. Majority of kids are competitive by nature, what you don't need are competitive coaches at underage. In my day, training consisted of a game, or backs against forwards with the odd technical drill thrown in around the hand-pass and the solo. Even now that's the basis of any underage or senior training session I take in any sport, conditioned small sided games. We need to stop blinding coaches with science.

If I was to sit down with a bunch of 8 year olds and design a session it would not consist of technical, mental or tactical components, certainly not in a deliberate drill designed sense, they would insist on fun and games with weird rules.

Anyway the whole thing annoyed me, and yes I did feed it back, but just wanted to write it down somewhere...

having qualified coaches means they can better set up little games to improve the technical skills of the children, without them even realising it
you can usually tell the clubs that train their children using lots of 'drills' and cone to cone activities with less games based

the technical proficiency of coaching is being driven by standards
up to recently Irish sports coaching had relatively no standards laid down for coaches to attain
coaching in the US has had standards in almost every sport for the last 50 years, maybe that's why their professional sports are so well coached (generally)
same for soccer in eg Holland or Germany. The coaching standards are high and so generally the children get good coaching
look at how poor the delivery of PE is in Irish education
most primary schools don't do PE. they do games. either gaelic, hurling or soccer.
most secondary schools don't do PE. again, they do games.

If there was one big change I would make to Under 8 and Under 10 games in the GAA, I'd make them go to even smaller sided games. eg Under 8 is 5 v 5. small pitch, loads of touches for everyone. Under 10 is 7 v 7. Sure, you'll have to make loads of teams and have more coaches. But surely the idea is just to let them play, so then 'head' coaches don't need to exercise all this control over the young kids

[Dinny Breen]

So my own club in conjunction with a Games Development Officer set up a course(online and pitch) for all under age coaches, I do the u8s. It was football specific, so while some of the messages were good, participation and inclusivity, the rest was too technical and ignored completely the primary reason why kids play sport in the first place, fun, fun, fun. I genuinely believe that giving all these resources and courses is becoming counter productive. Listening to some Offaly hurling development officer talking on OTB recently about how his home club has only 70+ players aged 7-17 but has 90+ qualified coaches, he was bloody proud of this. The obsession in Irish sport of driving technical and tactical standards is not helping us win the battle, underage sport should only be about participation and fun. Majority of kids are competitive by nature, what you don't need are competitive coaches at underage. In my day, training consisted of a game, or backs against forwards with the odd technical drill thrown in around the hand-pass and the solo. Even now that's the basis of any underage or senior training session I take in any sport, conditioned small sided games. We need to stop blinding coaches with science.

If I was to sit down with a bunch of 8 year olds and design a session it would not consist of technical, mental or tactical components, certainly not in a deliberate drill designed sense, they would insist on fun and games with weird rules.

Anyway the whole thing annoyed me, and yes I did feed it back, but just wanted to write it down somewhere...

having qualified coaches means they can better set up little games to improve the technical skills of the children, without them even realising it
you can usually tell the clubs that train their children using lots of 'drills' and cone to cone activities with less games based

the technical proficiency of coaching is being driven by standards
up to recently Irish sports coaching had relatively no standards laid down for coaches to attain
coaching in the US has had standards in almost every sport for the last 50 years, maybe that's why their professional sports are so well coached (generally)
same for soccer in eg Holland or Germany. The coaching standards are high and so generally the children get good coaching
look at how poor the delivery of PE is in Irish education
most primary schools don't do PE. they do games. either gaelic, hurling or soccer.
most secondary schools don't do PE. again, they do games.

If there was one big change I would make to Under 8 and Under 10 games in the GAA, I'd make them go to even smaller sided games. eg Under 8 is 5 v 5. small pitch, loads of touches for everyone. Under 10 is 7 v 7. Sure, you'll have to make loads of teams and have more coaches. But surely the idea is just to let them play, so then 'head' coaches don't need to exercise all this control over the young kids

Of course let them play 100% and small sided games are excellent, but still it's all geared towards upskilling players and not retention. The primary reason kids drop out of sport is that they are not having fun. Not every game has to be about a ball and touches, play tag, bulldog, tugs of war...give them free play...let them socialise...let them be 7/8/9 years of age.  Again we are imposing adult values on  kids, they don't quit because they can't kick with both feet...



It's just my opinion it's become all too serious...

[Hound]

So my own club in conjunction with a Games Development Officer set up a course(online and pitch) for all under age coaches, I do the u8s. It was football specific, so while some of the messages were good, participation and inclusivity, the rest was too technical and ignored completely the primary reason why kids play sport in the first place, fun, fun, fun. I genuinely believe that giving all these resources and courses is becoming counter productive. Listening to some Offaly hurling development officer talking on OTB recently about how his home club has only 70+ players aged 7-17 but has 90+ qualified coaches, he was bloody proud of this. The obsession in Irish sport of driving technical and tactical standards is not helping us win the battle, underage sport should only be about participation and fun. Majority of kids are competitive by nature, what you don't need are competitive coaches at underage. In my day, training consisted of a game, or backs against forwards with the odd technical drill thrown in around the hand-pass and the solo. Even now that's the basis of any underage or senior training session I take in any sport, conditioned small sided games. We need to stop blinding coaches with science.

If I was to sit down with a bunch of 8 year olds and design a session it would not consist of technical, mental or tactical components, certainly not in a deliberate drill designed sense, they would insist on fun and games with weird rules.

Anyway the whole thing annoyed me, and yes I did feed it back, but just wanted to write it down somewhere...

Well said Dinny!
I've been saying this for ages on the anti-Dubs threads, but to no avail.

The GDO money that Dublin get goes to this exactly. Young GDOs give 'paint by number' coaching sessions to children under 8 and to the parents who take on coaching underage teams. They spend half their time in local schools giving very basic hurling, football and camogie lessons, instead of PE, to primary schoolchildren and encouraging them to go up to the local GAA club. The GDOs in Dublin have  helped increase the numbers of children playing. They've nothing at all to do with elite players and in almost all cases deal with the exact opposite at clubs.

Yet still you'll get gobshites here and elsewhere saying the GDO money is why Dublin 4 have won in a row!

[Croí na hÉireann]

So my own club in conjunction with a Games Development Officer set up a course(online and pitch) for all under age coaches, I do the u8s. It was football specific, so while some of the messages were good, participation and inclusivity, the rest was too technical and ignored completely the primary reason why kids play sport in the first place, fun, fun, fun. I genuinely believe that giving all these resources and courses is becoming counter productive. Listening to some Offaly hurling development officer talking on OTB recently about how his home club has only 70+ players aged 7-17 but has 90+ qualified coaches, he was bloody proud of this. The obsession in Irish sport of driving technical and tactical standards is not helping us win the battle, underage sport should only be about participation and fun. Majority of kids are competitive by nature, what you don't need are competitive coaches at underage. In my day, training consisted of a game, or backs against forwards with the odd technical drill thrown in around the hand-pass and the solo. Even now that's the basis of any underage or senior training session I take in any sport, conditioned small sided games. We need to stop blinding coaches with science.

If I was to sit down with a bunch of 8 year olds and design a session it would not consist of technical, mental or tactical components, certainly not in a deliberate drill designed sense, they would insist on fun and games with weird rules.

Anyway the whole thing annoyed me, and yes I did feed it back, but just wanted to write it down somewhere...

What do you mean by being too technical and blinding coaches with science Dinny? The technical aspects from what I remember of the Award Courses were where to position your head, hands and feet, etc.

I'd agree with the rest of your post, what adults think kids need and what kids want are light years apart. I too have u8s, girls, and as well as Go Games we have a one hour session every week where we do both codes. We pick a skill and try and coach that through fun games where they nearly forget what we're working on. Loads of balls going in loads of directions, organised chaos. It's taken a mountain of effort to persuade our coaches of the benefits of this approach and away from lines, etc. but we're getting there.

Would also agree that Go Games are too many a side to start off with. Plus when all our numbers turn up our coaches want everyone on which means games turn out into 9v9. Again, small steps needed to change mindsets here as well.

[manfromdelmonte]

So my own club in conjunction with a Games Development Officer set up a course(online and pitch) for all under age coaches, I do the u8s. It was football specific, so while some of the messages were good, participation and inclusivity, the rest was too technical and ignored completely the primary reason why kids play sport in the first place, fun, fun, fun. I genuinely believe that giving all these resources and courses is becoming counter productive. Listening to some Offaly hurling development officer talking on OTB recently about how his home club has only 70+ players aged 7-17 but has 90+ qualified coaches, he was bloody proud of this. The obsession in Irish sport of driving technical and tactical standards is not helping us win the battle, underage sport should only be about participation and fun. Majority of kids are competitive by nature, what you don't need are competitive coaches at underage. In my day, training consisted of a game, or backs against forwards with the odd technical drill thrown in around the hand-pass and the solo. Even now that's the basis of any underage or senior training session I take in any sport, conditioned small sided games. We need to stop blinding coaches with science.

If I was to sit down with a bunch of 8 year olds and design a session it would not consist of technical, mental or tactical components, certainly not in a deliberate drill designed sense, they would insist on fun and games with weird rules.

Anyway the whole thing annoyed me, and yes I did feed it back, but just wanted to write it down somewhere...

Well said Dinny!
I've been saying this for ages on the anti-Dubs threads, but to no avail.

The GDO money that Dublin get goes to this exactly. Young GDOs give 'paint by number' coaching sessions to children under 8 and to the parents who take on coaching underage teams. They spend half their time in local schools giving very basic hurling, football and camogie lessons, instead of PE, to primary schoolchildren and encouraging them to go up to the local GAA club. The GDOs in Dublin have  helped increase the numbers of children playing. They've nothing at all to do with elite players and in almost all cases deal with the exact opposite at clubs.

Yet still you'll get gobshites here and elsewhere saying the GDO money is why Dublin 4 have won in a row!

the GDOs are paid recruitment officers for the gaa club (funded through every other county)
they identify the talent and try to get them to the club
the club then makes footballers out of them

no other county has this structure in place

and by designing games, I meant fun games where they run better, side step better, stop and reverse better
'games' doesn't necessarily involve a hurley or football

[kerryforsam19]

So my own club in conjunction with a Games Development Officer set up a course(online and pitch) for all under age coaches, I do the u8s. It was football specific, so while some of the messages were good, participation and inclusivity, the rest was too technical and ignored completely the primary reason why kids play sport in the first place, fun, fun, fun. I genuinely believe that giving all these resources and courses is becoming counter productive. Listening to some Offaly hurling development officer talking on OTB recently about how his home club has only 70+ players aged 7-17 but has 90+ qualified coaches, he was bloody proud of this. The obsession in Irish sport of driving technical and tactical standards is not helping us win the battle, underage sport should only be about participation and fun. Majority of kids are competitive by nature, what you don't need are competitive coaches at underage. In my day, training consisted of a game, or backs against forwards with the odd technical drill thrown in around the hand-pass and the solo. Even now that's the basis of any underage or senior training session I take in any sport, conditioned small sided games. We need to stop blinding coaches with science.

If I was to sit down with a bunch of 8 year olds and design a session it would not consist of technical, mental or tactical components, certainly not in a deliberate drill designed sense, they would insist on fun and games with weird rules.

Anyway the whole thing annoyed me, and yes I did feed it back, but just wanted to write it down somewhere...

Well said Dinny!
I've been saying this for ages on the anti-Dubs threads, but to no avail.

The GDO money that Dublin get goes to this exactly. Young GDOs give 'paint by number' coaching sessions to children under 8 and to the parents who take on coaching underage teams. They spend half their time in local schools giving very basic hurling, football and camogie lessons, instead of PE, to primary schoolchildren and encouraging them to go up to the local GAA club. The GDOs in Dublin have  helped increase the numbers of children playing. They've nothing at all to do with elite players and in almost all cases deal with the exact opposite at clubs.

Yet still you'll get gobshites here and elsewhere saying the GDO money is why Dublin 4 have won in a row!

Dublin got matching funding for every full time coach attached to a club.
It's a completely different model of development.
Coach is attached to a club, they do regular visits to schools, recruit kid's for clubs, helps run nursery and coaching in the club.

The coaches in every other county delivering any coaching done in schools do so on a part time or voluntary basis.