Coaches must realise success will follow if player comes first

It is less a matter of what’s professional practice as what’s good practice. The best managers and management teams understand this, writes <b>Kieran Shannon</b>.

All these years and the message still hasn’t sunk in.

Ten years ago the GAA coaching conference also focused on burnout, just like last weekend’s one investigated it as well. At the outset of the discussion, Eugene Young from Ulster GAA had an illustrated slide of a faceless player running on a treadmill with seven bubbles hovering around him. Each bubble represented a team he was playing with. Young asked delegates to think of a player like that which they knew — very possibly in their own club — and to bear them in mind throughout the rest of the evening and the years.