Real development

[Mrs mills]

Methinks you may be giving managers more credit than due. You might get a surprise!

[brokencrossbar1]

Methinks you may be giving managers more credit than due. You might get a surprise!

I am not giving them credit at all, I am saying that is the least that should be expected.  if this is not happening then the manager in my opinion is failing his players.  You seem to have a bit of a hard on about this, are you not impressed with the job McIvor is doing for Derry?

[Mrs mills]

Absolutely. He has worked wonders with limited cover for key positions.

[Donnellys Hollow]

Now I am told that Tomas O'Connor is a club midfielder who has been selected at full forward only because Kildare do not have an established [scoring] full forward. Can anyone shed light on this?

Tomás was a half back when he made his Kildare debut under Pádraig Nolan at 18. When Johnny Crofton took over he did try him at full forward a few times during 2006 and 2007 but he mostly played at midfield.

In 2008 and 2009 he suffered a number of desperate knee injuries and had to have a number of operations. There was some doubt as to whether he'd ever play again. He did some serious weights work during this period because it was the only fitness work he could do with the state his knees were in. When he returned in 2010 his bodyshape had been transformed but he no longer had the fitness to cover the whole field which is required for an inter county midfielder and has been played primarily as a target man ever since. He still plays at midfield for Clane but he's nowhere near as mobile as he was before all his injuries.

[Zulu]

If we were all county managers of a fictional division 1 team and we were reviewing the season, what might have been the order of priority in terms of time given during collective sessions to the following: technical development through drills, strength and conditioning, game sense, running (aerobic and speed work)? Try listing them 1 to 4.

I'm not sure you can list them one to four as it would probably different for each group of players. While I agree with your basic premise that we don't develop players like we should I think it's difficult to address in an amateur game with a fairly poor structure to the season.

It's interesting to see a post saying Dublin have a skills coach and I'd be keen to hear what expertise Mick Bohan has to qualify him for this. But I would say the vast majority of county teams pay a good deal of attention to skill development but in an amateur game all aspects of preparation will be a bit below what could be achieved in a professional sport.

[neilthemac]

I'd like to see a study done on, say three groups of players. either in third level situation, or underage development squads or some other closed group where you can control the training sessions. Even if a club had 4/5 teams they could try and train the teams differently to see what the results were. Ideally you'd have a combination of all aspects of training, but for the purposes of a study you could focus on three areas.

One team concentrate 80% on skills and improving players abilities on the ball, allowing them make on the field decisions

One team concentrate on physical fitness and conditioning, with less ballwork or tactical planning

One team focus on implementing a tactical gameplan based on the players natural abilities, with training focussed on getting that right and the mental aspect of the game.

[Zulu]

That would an interesting study but impossible to control and questions over whether you intervened long enough to make any real difference would make any results dubious I would imagine.

While I dislike the current senior structure, I really dislike the current IC minor and U21 structures. We constantly bemoan the lack of development of promising minors into senior players but they might only play a handful of IC games at minor and U21 level combined, why aren't these competitions run on groups of 8 or even 16? They all probably play 6 to 8 challenge matches anyway so finance should be an issue and once you remove the dual or multi representative players you can play a game a week for 7+ weeks with an All Ireland QF or SF at the end to get your All Ireland finalists. This way a guy who played two years at minor and two years at U21 level could have played a minimum of 28 IC games against his peers before asking him to play senior.

[fearglasmor]

Now I am told that Tomas O'Connor is a club midfielder who has been selected at full forward only because Kildare do not have an established [scoring] full forward. Can anyone shed light on this?

Tomás was a half back when he made his Kildare debut under Pádraig Nolan at 18. When Johnny Crofton took over he did try him at full forward a few times during 2006 and 2007 but he mostly played at midfield.

In 2008 and 2009 he suffered a number of desperate knee injuries and had to have a number of operations. There was some doubt as to whether he'd ever play again. He did some serious weights work during this period because it was the only fitness work he could do with the state his knees were in. When he returned in 2010 his bodyshape had been transformed but he no longer had the fitness to cover the whole field which is required for an inter county midfielder and has been played primarily as a target man ever since. He still plays at midfield for Clane but he's nowhere near as mobile as he was before all his injuries.

Amazing the impact that genes have. Very similar to his pater. Except he wouldn't have done all the weights work.

[muppet]

Interesting study of European Soccer talent development by the US:

What to look for?
• TIPS (Ajax):Talent,Intilligence,Personality,Speed

http://www.usyouthsoccer.org/assets/1/1/07_Key_Features_of_Elite_Young_Player_Dev_Europe.pdf

GOOD PRACTICE = DEVELOPING PERFORMERS AT 16-18 YEARS OF AGE

TALENT IDENTIFICATION-SELECT WHAT'S MEASURABLE -PHYSICAL : Find the early birthdays !

• Turkey won the 2005 UEFA Under 17 Championship in 2005:Qualification Date (January 1st)
- 50% of the squad were born in the first 3 months of the qualification date -10% were born in the last 3 months of the qualification date (Oct-December)

[Zulu]

There are also studies that show a disproportionally high number of elite athletes come from towns/cities with populations around 100,000 (I think it was anyway). The point was that these areas were big enough to provide all types of sports but small enough that they could get good coaching and not fall between the cracks as happens in very large population centres.

One of the reasons kids born early in the year is because of their greater physical maturity they often get picked for development squads which exposes them to a higher level of coaching and thus widens the gap between them and their more physically immature peers.

[johnneycool]

That would an interesting study but impossible to control and questions over whether you intervened long enough to make any real difference would make any results dubious I would imagine.

While I dislike the current senior structure, I really dislike the current IC minor and U21 structures. We constantly bemoan the lack of development of promising minors into senior players but they might only play a handful of IC games at minor and U21 level combined, why aren't these competitions run on groups of 8 or even 16? They all probably play 6 to 8 challenge matches anyway so finance should be an issue and once you remove the dual or multi representative players you can play a game a week for 7+ weeks with an All Ireland QF or SF at the end to get your All Ireland finalists. This way a guy who played two years at minor and two years at U21 level could have played a minimum of 28 IC games against his peers before asking him to play senior.

That may work from a Dublin perspective where the club scene would be largely unaffected by clubs missing 2 or 3 players at best. Smaller rural clubs feeding 5 or 6 players into a county set up at each grade would mean all club games would grind to a halt for the remaining players.

The rule not allowing youngsters to field two grades above their age is well intended but can crucify rural clubs struggling for numbers.

[Zulu]

Not really Jonny. I'm not advocating it for club level as the numbers aren't there as you say. If you did something along the lines I proposed, then you could run these competitions during the national league period so the majority of counties would be finished U21 and minor football and hurling championships by early summer, which is better than what we currently have.

[neilthemac]

Interesting study of European Soccer talent development by the US:

What to look for?
• TIPS (Ajax):Talent,Intilligence,Personality,Speed

http://www.usyouthsoccer.org/assets/1/1/07_Key_Features_of_Elite_Young_Player_Dev_Europe.pdf

GOOD PRACTICE = DEVELOPING PERFORMERS AT 16-18 YEARS OF AGE

TALENT IDENTIFICATION-SELECT WHAT'S MEASURABLE -PHYSICAL : Find the early birthdays !

• Turkey won the 2005 UEFA Under 17 Championship in 2005:Qualification Date (January 1st)
- 50% of the squad were born in the first 3 months of the qualification date -10% were born in the last 3 months of the qualification date (Oct-December)

now that, is an interesting read
thanks