Older daughter and younger son.
Daughter moved to LGFA after u7 so i stayed with young lad coming up. It’s actually my 4th year if you include u6s before the age change.
It’s torture at times to be honest 
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They end up “volleying” the ball with their fist. Once you get that out of them they are fine.
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That’s fair torture. I went back down a few times recently. Jaysus I don’t miss it. It has its moments but I feel like there’s more and more ‘special cases’ turning up as the years go on. Tis hard work at times. Great craic but Jaysus hard work.
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In other news it “clicked” with the 10 year old this year. It’s a beautiful thing to see when it happens.
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I’m doing the football and the hurling. A seperate night of each. I was the worst hurler in the parish but at that age i find it a lot easier to coach. The helmet acts like blinkers and the hurley occupies a hand. Whereas with football they just run riot for an hour.
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I’ll tell you what’s hardship… When 2 girls land into an u12 camogie squad, one from the US and one from Australia and they want to take up camogie from scratch…In fairness to one of them she has mastered the swing and can hit a ball 60m but it took some practice.
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Jaysus that’s horrible. Got two lads in this year, 11 and want to play hurling for the first time. You’re right back to nursery. Hence why I bumped the Hurley post recently. Stripped it right back to basic. They’re athletic at least. You can work with that.
Same as that. Is it bad to want some of them to give it up entirely sometimes? I mean I know the belief that ‘you have to develop everyone because you never know’ but Jaysus, sometimes you just fucking know.
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Is it wrong that sometimes you get a boost from seeing a 
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The main problem I see with them is that 90% of them get absolutely no help from the parents at home,they drop Johnny off for an hour every week and expect the coaches to perform miracles.
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We played a game recently and 4 of those lads couldn’t make it. The other lads were flying it, it was magical. I know it’s bad, but it was glimpse into what could be. But fuck it, you need them lads too and everyone has their place. You’d just love to see them develop but….
Ah ya, and just a general lack of play time in general means they don’t figure it out for themselves. Picking up a hurley once a week for an hour is no use.
But on the flip side at our age we hardly trained before 10 and ended up fine. Now you’d be writing a young lad off at 8.
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Fact. Pretty much every kid in my son’s age group who has the skills mastered (for their age) have parents who played themselves
My young fella and our next door neighbour are in the same class…both of them can kick left and right and handpass with both hands because they spent 40/50 hours a week during the lockdown practising
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I’m sick saying it. If you’re not doing something at home you may leave it so. I have parents ask me why their lad isn’t coming on like the others. I ask them where was the hurl today before you came out to training. ‘In the closet’. You may leave it so when you hear that. I’m blue in the face telling the missus to stop putting the hurls away. I finally have her converted. Out of sight out of mind.
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Parents are mad bastards too. I’ve a girl who comes to camogie, a lovely girl, great crack but hasn’t a morsel of interest in camogie. At a game recently I could see she was reluctant to come on as a sub and I said do you want to come on and she said no, I’d prefer to watch it. So I had a chat with her after the game and she says she only goes to camogie cause her parents want her to and she enjoys meeting her friends too but she was clear she hates camogie.
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Myself and one of the Ballybrown coaches that trains the same age group as myself were chatting the other day about this,and he said maybe we’re expecting too much from them.And for some of them he’s right.Espcially with the hurling.
Could you start to maybe move her more towards a helper role? You’d obviously have to broach it with the parents, but maybe get her to help set out cones etc
Absolutely nothing wrong with that as long as she’s happy
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We really are but it’s an arms race and you have to keep up, as best you can
I suspect she’ll drop it soon. She has a few other sports on the go.
We’ve nearly too many options for kids in the locality at the minute and I reckon alot of kids are exhausted. In April/May the U12 league was being played, 12 of my panel are involved in u12 soccer, 9 in athletics, 7 in Broadway dance, 11 in scouts… 15 of them play hockey* but that ended in April… And this doesn’t even take into account the paddle boarding etc.
Parents are in a spin trying to keep up and kids are exhausted.
*Hockey is non dominant hand on top so imagine the confusion that creates.
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