i have a lot of time for diarmuid. he has taken numerous juvenile teams in his club and has taken the odd session when asked by midleton cbs. His coaching was very impressive by all account.
Having seen him in action this year i can say i was suitably impressed. This is a very good move, i really hope he gets a good team with him and they are his men.
Get Sean Og and Donal Og in there with him, unbeatable.
Anyway I think the Minors a couple of years down the line (this year’s U-16s) are very good, so hopefully he’ll do a decent job. Should have a decent set of forwards next year as well.
Kev, who would your pick be for the senior job?
I would like to see an out and out hurling coach like Sean O’ Brien brought in along with someone like John Crowley (but not necessarily him) and whoever Sean O Brien would like with him. Have someone there for continuity in the future but also make sure that by having his own man SOB would have more or less total control, which is the way it should be.
I think SOB has improved the hurling of every player he has comes across from what i saw, and really with a bunch of unproven 21 year olds Corks only hope for the near future he will at least get them to the peak of their powers.
On the Minors, i personally wouldn’t have Sean Og in there. From what i have heard from players coached by him, Donal Og is about the best they have come across.
Is he training Cloyne this year?
Maurice Cahill is down as ‘coach’.
Anyway, Donal Og, Sean Og and Diarmuid would be inspiring if nothing else. I’m sure Sean Og will be around for these kind of jobs a few years down the line.
Maurices son is a loss to Cloyne, and maybe even Cork. Don’t think Sean Og has the communications skills myself. May make a good trainer though.
ffs and programme them to play short passing hurling.
its philips young fella
@Turenne,
It was donal og who got cloyne seniors playing the short passing game ala cork seniors 2003-2006 the year he took charge of them. Cloyne did not have the players to make a game like that succeed but he still imposed his own hurling philosophy on them. If ever a team should have being playing direct hurling it was that cloyne team as they were one of the most physically impressive teams i had seen. I dare suggest that if they had played a style of hurling that played to their strengths they would have won at least one county with that group of players.
@Kev,
I would be interested in your definition of a coach. To me a coach fundamentally improves players by copperfastening their stengths and eliminating weaknesses in their games. He shows players how to correctly play their positions, the importance of playing as a team and making decisions to that end. Drills should be used to focus on these. From all this will come a style/pattern of play that focuses on the collective strengths of the team but should also be adaptable.
A lot of lads go to cork training sessions and take note of drills and go back to their clubs and have them doing said drills. You could train a monkey to that. The problem is that many people see a good coach as someone with fancy drills. I know for a fact that diarmuid o sullivan is a coach by my definition and that is why i see him as a great appointment
on your point on coaching fenway, I have seen coaching courses where joe soap comes in and his only interest is to get a book of drills he can take back and impliment on his team. the co ordinator is trying hard to tell them that a set of drills is not the way forward, but to use drills that are adaptable for the team being coached and create drills to suit them rather than just picking them from a book (or other teams) and blindly using them. its mad seeing teams doing some of these complicated drills and they havenet a notion what the coach is on about. and the coach doesnt either for that matter!
exactly my point gman. its so fucking frustrating to see
+1 on that turenne. at that age its important to have a legend involves and it brings a aura of success to the whole operation from the beginning.
I would let him choose his own selectors and backroom team. when you select a manager, you have to trust that he will surround himself with the right people rather than simply ‘yes’ men.
I believe that both the hurling and football teams should have the same strength and conditioning coach. this would be a huge help to the dual player and would help to prevent player burn out.
The problem with senior intercounty hurlers and footballers is that they are training professionally but not getting the recovery that they need. i have no doubt that this is leading to the huge amount of injuries that we see players in gaelic games get. on top of that they are playing club hurling and football matches. This is going to fuck a lot of lads up big time when they retire.
Aidan walsh by all accounts could barely move (understandably) after being brought on for CIT the other night. That was his 4th significant match in about two weeks. Its too much. The GAA needs to take the issue of player burn out seriously as there are too many lads playing too many matches.
Yeah you could see Walsh’s hamstrings were very tight, couldn’t really sprint properly, although he still made an incredible catch down by the sideline, fantastic leap.
Lads, get on Newtown at evens to beat Sars on Saturday week, a fantastic bet.
Re: Donal Og and Cloyne, did they really play a short hand passing game? I don’t particularly remember it being overly short passing. I know you don’t like Donal Og by the way you go on, and thats fair enough, but he didn’t even train them each year so i think you are a little unfair.
Ya, i’m completely with ye here Fenway and i have seen exactly what Gman is on about there. There are different drills though, Conditioning Drills and skills drills. Having good conditioned games are far more useful to a coach than any drills. Drills are for kids learning the basics.
You have to work on basics all the time, but they should really only be in the warm up or brief at start of training. I see what they do here in the AFL. You can arrive between 5.30 & 5.45 and you go for a kick around. You’ll be brought in around 5.50 and the coach has a white board, goes through the last game/session. tells you the drills you are going through which is done with the captain. the drills have a name and everyone knows them and thats it. They are simple, basic and everything is covered between tuesday and thursday. The vice captain will have done the warm up which is quick and to the point (dynamic) before the drills. Within 20 minutes you are into the games, of different sorts. This is where the coach comes into his own. He quickly explains the game or games and off you go. He blows the whistle for fellas to come in every 3 minutes and points stuff out, makes observations. Uses examples of the week before and talks sometimes about the team we are playing next. During the games he will also talk to individuals and make a point to them or talk about something technically. I’ve been called over a couple of times due to obvious technical difficulties i may be having. This guys is very technically aware and he explains things well, a small change here or there and off you go. There is no real shouting or anything, just little reminders bout what the main point of the games are.
The games are quite loose in structure but you can’t hide, which is great. IN between when there might be slight adjustments made to the point of the game or the rules you may also go away and do some sprinting or a quick conditioning circuit, but only on tuesdays.
Then at the end there is a quick recap, no bull shit talking and no talking in dressing room after, which i used to do but now actually despise. Sometimes repeating yourself makes you sound like a. you like the sound of your own voice or b. you are not confident in what you are saying.
For me though that is coaching, what i explain above and it is somewhere near where i would like to think i would have brought myself to as a coach. But it would have been self taught and i don’t think the coaching co-ordinators do enough to push this kind of coaching. It is very hard for them in the setting like gman describes. We were lucky enough to have a coach like that for the past 2 years, there was very little bull shit, although in both cases i’d still think they over did the drills a bit.
Coaching is technical. Improving the technical abilities of the individuals and the team in general.
Being a Trainer is organising the session and coming up with drills, possibly monitoring the fitness, testing etc. Strength & Conditioning is becoming important at club level now as well, so knowledgeable people are needed here to be successful. Nemo & The Barrs for instance have top guys involved, as do CLon and a few others. Some teams are winging it.
A Manager is someone who organises team logistics, deals with the organising fixtures, deals with the club officers, players concerns (maybe through a liason officer from players). Maybe organise equipment, footballs, hurleys etc.
Now often in a small GAA club that is the same person, or at least the first 2 are the same person. I would like to think personally i have developed into a combination of the first 2. At underage i would have filled all 3 roles really, but thats fairly normal.
The Managers role at IC is different and i think different counties have different set ups. Corks was Denis Walsh is the manager and the coach. Someone else was the “Trainer”, but from what i gathered this was just from the physical side. KK seemed to have Cody as Coach, but with a clearly defined role for the Trainer who was a “Hurling Trainer” as opposed to just a physical trainer. Tipp have brought that on another level. Ryan is the manager, probably does all the talking and manages his team of selectors & trainers. Tommy Dunne is the coach and works with Cian O’ Neill who is the Trainer. But the key here is O’ Neill is trusted with Hurling as well, and they are basiaclly all on the same page.
Tipps is the best balanced and most open in my opinion. Cody’s is probably a bit more restricted but obviously worked well for so long, but they may need to allow someone else in to freshen it up, i’m not sure. Corks is basiaclly behind the times and is maybe why Walsh made some of the mistakes he made, he had too much on his plate.
I’m agreeing with you here generally, but with the strength & conditioning, they should just have 2 people hired full time for the role at this stage. One head coach and an assistant. The programs would differ a bit these days as well, so you’d have to get someone really on the ball to work a dual players program. But having said that it should not be too difficult.
The Aidan Walsh thing is a farce, but the lad himself should not have togged that day (CIT).
Do they not play backs and forwards in AFL?
Kev,
fact are cloyne did play a short passing game and this did start under donal og. im not in the business of making up facts to back up a point.
im well aware of the distinction between a manager, coach, trainer etc. point i was making is that many people see a trainer as a coach.
@kev,
With regards aidan walsh. he is very difficuly for a player at that age to say no to management as he does not want to let any one down (management, team mates/friends etc).
The onus on management to look after the player. They need to take a duty of care. The problem is that most management want to win so badly that they ignore this.
But there are combinations of both. A decent coach should be a trainer as well. Tommy Dunne for instance did the same diploma i did in Strength and Conditioning. This added to his hurling coaching makes him a very acomplished “Coach” for Tipp. When he gets comfortable on the line and learns that role as well he’ll be a real top Manager in the Inter County use of the title. Manager in GAA is not really defined.On Cloyne - How much of them did you see? I don’t remember them having a real distinctive short passing running game, it may have been part of it, but they certainly didn’t play like Cork or Newtown.