A FEW YEARS back, a county U15 development squad was formed.
The county U14 champions were well represented, as you might expect. But one prominent player could not attend as they were injured at the time of trials.
After a few weeks, the player’s father called up the coaches in charge and asked if they might be willing to have a look at him, now that he had regained fitness. He was told to come on up, and he was well able for that level of football.
A couple of months later, they had a hitch. The player’s club had a championship match on the Wednesday night. The development squad were meeting for a challenge match the night after, a Thursday.
The player’s father called up the club coaches to explain that he would not be playing in the championship game – he needed to rest up for a match with ‘the county’ the following night.
Another time, a different county was late in getting their U14 development squad up and running. They hosted a trial series across a Saturday. The person in charge was close friends with the county manager of the time and asked for help to whittle down the hopefuls.
The first encounter that a couple of dozen kids had with their county senior manager . . . was being told they weren’t good enough to make it onto the development squad.
Research
Once you research county development squads, you realise the horror stories come more frequently than the tales of positive experiences.
Last weekend, we took a deep dive into what goes on across the board with children brought into such panels from the age of 13. For some, it proves a hugely rewarding time as they improve at their sport and journey through adolescence.
Those examples came up less frequently. Now, this was not a scientific study and some of this could be down to people focusing on the negatives.
Either way, there are questions the GAA have to answer here. Are they simply following the example of professional sports clubs, with their own version of academies?
By selecting high performers, are they elevating them above their peers in their clubs, which we are repeatedly being told is the bedrock of the Association?
What good overall does it do if these new environments in place are not of the highest standard? Not just when it comes to best practice in hurling or football, but in whether they treat teenagers with fairness and compassion.
How do we know the majority of development squads enrich the life of the young players, rather than add another layer of stress to their lives?
Celtic Tiger origins
While there were some initiatives of this kind in place around the turn of the century, the process was accelerated by the decision taken in 2005 by former taoiseach Bertie Ahern who, along with Dublin county board chairman John Bailey, devised a programme whereby Dublin clubs would benefit from a €1 million per annum investment.
Now, there is a distinction. The clubs would have to provide €20,000 and the government funding was €25,000. Together, it paid for the €45,000 salary of the coaches who would go into the primary schools.
This wasn’t a development squad.
But faced with such a generous, proactive approach, rival counties had to up their game. Funding such a scheme by themselves would prove impossible, so they placed their faith in establishing development squads.
Costs
They were a lot more affordable, but still not cheap. Today, some counties are spending up to €60,000 a year on development squads. Between pitch and bus hire, food and equipment, the costs are not long mounting up.
No county is willing to say that it is not working for them. To say so would feel like defeat. But a scan of the underage results at the groups below minor level can reveal a chasm between neighbouring counties.
We have likely gone beyond the stage where we question if it is right to follow the model of professional sports in how we train our talented young athletes.
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This decision has been made time and again in the past two decades, and we have passed the point of no return. This is happening, and will continue to do so – so we should at least emulate the best academy systems, rather than so many which are exploitative and ultimately not concerned with the well-being of the player.
La Masia, at Barcelona FC, is perhaps the most famous academy. It could certainly be regarded as the most successful when you consider the output of talented footballers down through the years. But there is more to the place than serving as a production line for La Liga winning players.
As well as working on their touch, movement, passing, spatial awareness and all that good stuff, they concentrate on personal development.
All children are given mandatory school tutoring and monitoring. They are provided with emotional and psychological support, and they place humility at the centre of all they do, as well as social awareness through charity work and maintaining close relationships with the players’ families.
The former base of La Masia, Barcelona's academy. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
The lasting effect is how many of the Golden Generation of Messi, Iniesta, Xavi, Puyol and Pique and the rest still maintained lifelong friendships with others from the Masia, who didn’t go on to have a professional career in soccer.
In Simon Kuper’s book, Barca, we learned that a young Messi found the Masia’s ways different to what he was used to in Argentina, where it was much more physical.
“He was surprised to find the Masia prioritised improving over winning,” Kuper writes.
The author went on to state that a big difference he noticed between Masia and English academy he had visited years previously was “niceness”. They were raising children, not just mini professionals.
By contrast, reading ‘Forever Young’, the story of Adrian Doherty is a different experience. Doherty was born in Strabane and rated just as highly as Ryan Giggs in the Manchester United academy. The book paints an unflattering portrait of the culture at that club at the time.
Once the players were finished training, they were left to their own devices and that didn’t suit a character like Doherty, who enjoyed songwriting and poetry as his hobbies, rather than bizarre initiations or throwing fellow YTS Scheme boys into the tumble dryer.
Injury ruined Doherty’s potential career, and he passed away after a drowning accident in The Hague at the age of 26.
Some of his fellow youth players were unsure of his demise. Some had thought he was murdered, others thought suicide. It had been so long.
The point is that here are two sporting institutions, renowned for bringing through youth, but you see the distinction, right?
That prevailing culture of bullying at UK soccer academies long passed. And there is no absolutely suggestion that anything similar is or was taking place in development squads. But that’s not to say that children who attend today’s panels have not experienced some form of neglect, needless disappointment and a failure to manage expectations. Or at the very least, their time being utterly wasted.
In this age of information, the principles of best practice are never far away from your fingertips. The GAA themselves sounded the alarm on development squads when they commissioned a report in 2019, with former Cork manager Brian Cuthbert questioning the drive to win among practically all the development squads.
Some counties take a different approach. What we found in Clare looked to be a sensible, healthy approach, guided by how the former rugby player Niall McNamara advised them, ‘Take as many as you can, for as long as you can’.
They take 70 kids in at each age grade. They do not drop them, or cut the panel. When they play games, they don’t stream them as per their ability.
Bryan Keane / INPHO
Bryan Keane / INPHO / INPHO
That means losing games.
So what?
Instead, the focus is on skills development, improvement. For every six children there is one coach. They measure progress and offer constant feedback. The coaches themselves are largely of an older age. They aren’t targeting plum club jobs. They are in it for the right reasons.
Some counties are nowhere near any of that. I have heard of some coaches coming in, being handed a bag of balls and some cones and told to just get on with it.
Ultimately, the GAA are responsible for all the development squads up and down the country. There has to be a set of minimum standards, in coaching and care. These must be delivered through the county boards and individual coaches. It’s not like the resources are not there.
Most of all, the process has to be child-centred. Anything less and it becomes pointless.
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La Masia culture of holistic development should be of interest to the GAA
A FEW YEARS back, a county U15 development squad was formed.
The county U14 champions were well represented, as you might expect. But one prominent player could not attend as they were injured at the time of trials.
After a few weeks, the player’s father called up the coaches in charge and asked if they might be willing to have a look at him, now that he had regained fitness. He was told to come on up, and he was well able for that level of football.
A couple of months later, they had a hitch. The player’s club had a championship match on the Wednesday night. The development squad were meeting for a challenge match the night after, a Thursday.
The player’s father called up the club coaches to explain that he would not be playing in the championship game – he needed to rest up for a match with ‘the county’ the following night.
Another time, a different county was late in getting their U14 development squad up and running. They hosted a trial series across a Saturday. The person in charge was close friends with the county manager of the time and asked for help to whittle down the hopefuls.
The first encounter that a couple of dozen kids had with their county senior manager . . . was being told they weren’t good enough to make it onto the development squad.
Research
Once you research county development squads, you realise the horror stories come more frequently than the tales of positive experiences.
Last weekend, we took a deep dive into what goes on across the board with children brought into such panels from the age of 13. For some, it proves a hugely rewarding time as they improve at their sport and journey through adolescence.
Those examples came up less frequently. Now, this was not a scientific study and some of this could be down to people focusing on the negatives.
Either way, there are questions the GAA have to answer here. Are they simply following the example of professional sports clubs, with their own version of academies?
By selecting high performers, are they elevating them above their peers in their clubs, which we are repeatedly being told is the bedrock of the Association?
What good overall does it do if these new environments in place are not of the highest standard? Not just when it comes to best practice in hurling or football, but in whether they treat teenagers with fairness and compassion.
How do we know the majority of development squads enrich the life of the young players, rather than add another layer of stress to their lives?
Celtic Tiger origins
While there were some initiatives of this kind in place around the turn of the century, the process was accelerated by the decision taken in 2005 by former taoiseach Bertie Ahern who, along with Dublin county board chairman John Bailey, devised a programme whereby Dublin clubs would benefit from a €1 million per annum investment.
Now, there is a distinction. The clubs would have to provide €20,000 and the government funding was €25,000. Together, it paid for the €45,000 salary of the coaches who would go into the primary schools.
This wasn’t a development squad.
But faced with such a generous, proactive approach, rival counties had to up their game. Funding such a scheme by themselves would prove impossible, so they placed their faith in establishing development squads.
Costs
They were a lot more affordable, but still not cheap. Today, some counties are spending up to €60,000 a year on development squads. Between pitch and bus hire, food and equipment, the costs are not long mounting up.
No county is willing to say that it is not working for them. To say so would feel like defeat. But a scan of the underage results at the groups below minor level can reveal a chasm between neighbouring counties.
We have likely gone beyond the stage where we question if it is right to follow the model of professional sports in how we train our talented young athletes.
This decision has been made time and again in the past two decades, and we have passed the point of no return. This is happening, and will continue to do so – so we should at least emulate the best academy systems, rather than so many which are exploitative and ultimately not concerned with the well-being of the player.
La Masia, at Barcelona FC, is perhaps the most famous academy. It could certainly be regarded as the most successful when you consider the output of talented footballers down through the years. But there is more to the place than serving as a production line for La Liga winning players.
As well as working on their touch, movement, passing, spatial awareness and all that good stuff, they concentrate on personal development.
All children are given mandatory school tutoring and monitoring. They are provided with emotional and psychological support, and they place humility at the centre of all they do, as well as social awareness through charity work and maintaining close relationships with the players’ families.
The lasting effect is how many of the Golden Generation of Messi, Iniesta, Xavi, Puyol and Pique and the rest still maintained lifelong friendships with others from the Masia, who didn’t go on to have a professional career in soccer.
In Simon Kuper’s book, Barca, we learned that a young Messi found the Masia’s ways different to what he was used to in Argentina, where it was much more physical.
“He was surprised to find the Masia prioritised improving over winning,” Kuper writes.
The author went on to state that a big difference he noticed between Masia and English academy he had visited years previously was “niceness”. They were raising children, not just mini professionals.
By contrast, reading ‘Forever Young’, the story of Adrian Doherty is a different experience. Doherty was born in Strabane and rated just as highly as Ryan Giggs in the Manchester United academy. The book paints an unflattering portrait of the culture at that club at the time.
Once the players were finished training, they were left to their own devices and that didn’t suit a character like Doherty, who enjoyed songwriting and poetry as his hobbies, rather than bizarre initiations or throwing fellow YTS Scheme boys into the tumble dryer.
Injury ruined Doherty’s potential career, and he passed away after a drowning accident in The Hague at the age of 26.
Some of his fellow youth players were unsure of his demise. Some had thought he was murdered, others thought suicide. It had been so long.
That prevailing culture of bullying at UK soccer academies long passed. And there is no absolutely suggestion that anything similar is or was taking place in development squads. But that’s not to say that children who attend today’s panels have not experienced some form of neglect, needless disappointment and a failure to manage expectations. Or at the very least, their time being utterly wasted.
In this age of information, the principles of best practice are never far away from your fingertips. The GAA themselves sounded the alarm on development squads when they commissioned a report in 2019, with former Cork manager Brian Cuthbert questioning the drive to win among practically all the development squads.
Some counties take a different approach. What we found in Clare looked to be a sensible, healthy approach, guided by how the former rugby player Niall McNamara advised them, ‘Take as many as you can, for as long as you can’.
They take 70 kids in at each age grade. They do not drop them, or cut the panel. When they play games, they don’t stream them as per their ability.
That means losing games.
So what?
Instead, the focus is on skills development, improvement. For every six children there is one coach. They measure progress and offer constant feedback. The coaches themselves are largely of an older age. They aren’t targeting plum club jobs. They are in it for the right reasons.
Some counties are nowhere near any of that. I have heard of some coaches coming in, being handed a bag of balls and some cones and told to just get on with it.
Ultimately, the GAA are responsible for all the development squads up and down the country. There has to be a set of minimum standards, in coaching and care. These must be delivered through the county boards and individual coaches. It’s not like the resources are not there.
Most of all, the process has to be child-centred. Anything less and it becomes pointless.
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Coaching column Development GAA