WHEN SOMETHING GOES wrong, how will your team react?
That’s one of the questions grappled with by top-level coaches around the world, and analysed by Laois hurling revolutionary Séamus ‘Cheddar’ Plunkett on this week’s How To Win At Dominoes.
Cheddar joined Shane Keegan for the second episode of The42‘s brand-new coaching podcast and, in the course of a fascinating hour-long conversation, gave his thoughts on the sweet spot between a structured gameplan and the need for individual decision-making and flair.
“You need a team on the field that’s able to manage what’s in front of you, and you need team leadership within that team to recognise that and be able to change around what you’re doing,” he explained.
“There’s no point looking over to the sideline when the game’s in the melting pot and the opposition is throwing something at you that you haven’t seen before or expected in the pre-match analysis. You certainly need that.
“You’re really trying to look at that balance: get more structure in your team to give your team self-confidence about what they’re doing, and getting the wins behind you and the momentum behind you, while at the same time, having players on the field that can manage different situations in front of them.
It’s all about communications in the team. It’s not necessarily about coaching on the field. It’s building up leadership in the team, building up communications within the team themselves, how they react, what are the little calls to one another – the more you can stitch in or hardwire all of that wiring into players, the more successful your team is going to be.
“And that’s why you see experienced teams – people say, what’s experience? – it’s that wiring up of all the know-how, particularly the know-how when something goes against you: how do you react to that?
“You certainly can work a lot of that on the training field or particularly in challenge matches, you can create situations in mini-games among yourselves for this to happen, and then go back and review it and maybe ask the player, would you have done something different if this happened again? You can create those environments yourself.
“I would be concerned about overstructuring something and then it doesn’t go to plan and then the players are wondering, well what do I do next?”
How To Win At Dominoes is exclusively available to The42 Members, which costs €5 per month or €42 per year. Sign up here and get immediate access to this podcast and five others, all of our podcast archives, and lots more great membership benefits.
