GET REAL…Coaching has to deal with the reality of how the game is played.
Tackling Matters with Colm Bradley
The coach from the Ulster Council was ashen faced. Bodies were splayed across the gym floor of St Michael’s as a request to create a simple straight forward drill had turned into something rather apocalyptic. I blamed the men from Teemore.
It all took place 13 years ago at a level two coaching course. We coaches had been split into groups and tasked with coming up with some drills. Injured indefinitely with a collar bone break that was proving stubborn to heal I had decided to do as many coaching courses as possible. The group I landed in was one that contained some mighty shamrocks of an older vintage while the skill we were tasked with creating a drill for was the high catch.
It started off sedate enough. We discussed the correct coaching points, such as catching the ball at its height, thumbs being close together, pulling the ball into your chest and so on. We were going rightly you might say. And then the conversation got up among two of the Teemore men. Let’s call them Ted and Mick and let me paraphrase things:
TED: “Whadaya think? Should we throw in an oul shoulder when the boy lands with the ball.”
MICK: “Aye, we could surely. A bit of a rattle will do him no harm at all.”
TED: “Yeah, and the buck catching would need to be leading with the knee.”
MICK: “Good idea, you’d want to be protecting yourself and if you hurt the other boy well and good.”
I didn’t say anything but I will admit I thought they were stone mad; and from the stone age as well if I am being truthful. Well, the drill ensued and there was all but blood on the walls. What was described as ‘a bit of a rattle’ soon became a competition to see who could nail a man with a shoulder when he was at his most exposed.
It didn’t go down well with the coach from the Ulster Council. Rather smugly I thought I was right to silently ridicule the men from the Mountain Road.
Now, I have changed my tune completely. The Ulster Council coach may have been coaching by the book but all I can say is that if you follow that book religiously you will win damn all.
Correct textbook coaching is obviously important, especially with children, but the more time I spend with a whistle in my mouth the more convinced I am that the best type of coaching comes about when players are coached with respect to how the game is played rather that how we want it to be played. The truth of the matter is that the Teemore men who modified the high catching drill were spot on. They were coaching the game as it is played. And they had the championship medals to show they could play it too.
Over the past number of years whenever I get the chance to speak to coaches of adult teams around the country I always ask them how much of their coaching is based on the ‘approved’ methods. Not much has been the answer in the majority of cases.
On another note, just a few weeks ago I was talking to one of the best kick passers ever to grace the fields of Ireland. I was astounded when he related a story where he was told a kick passing drill he was doing with a team was not right because he was teaching the wrong ‘technique’. He has lost a bit of his coaching buzz, not unsurprisingly.
Let me say at this point I am not criticising the coaching manuals out there, and especially not the work done by the Ulster Council. I am criticising the coaches that insist on implementing every line of these manuals with a fanatical zeal. That inevitably leads to a complete lack of feel for the game.
Coaching should be about using sound structures to improve the players you are working with but always with a view to them playing the game better. To do that you have to think how to relate your coaching to the game. Tackling drills are a perfect example. Any team who coaches sticking to the letter of the law as laid out in tackling drills are destined to get hammered off the park. The way the game is played you have to coach the ‘half foul’, the ‘chop to the wrist’, the ‘thumb pull’ and a host of other ‘dark art’ methods that are used by the top club and county teams.
You may regard it as cheating but the reality is that you have to do it. There comes a point when you have to coach to win. And in that respect the men from Teemore were 100% right all those years ago up in St Michael’s gym.