Modern day coach needs to be all things to all men
One of the buzz words being used with hurling management now is ‘the package’ – as in, the manager who comes with a ready-made backroom team, with particular emphasis on a skills coach.
We’ll discuss that in a moment, but another striking aspect of the manager search is the concentration on the leadership styles required by various counties.
This group of players need a firm hand, while this bunch need to be involved in the decision-making process. This county needs someone to come in and clean out a clique of veterans, while another needs youngsters blended with the experienced mainstays of the team.
Hence our opening question: general or chairman?
Some counties need a man to give orders, while others need someone who’ll be more of a facilitator.
If you doubt there’s a difference, consider the successful general who became British Prime Minister. Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, was shaking his head when he met a friend after his first Cabinet meeting.
“Damnedest thing,” said Wellington.
“I gave them their orders and they wanted to stay and discuss them.”
There’s a different dynamic with the coaching brief, obviously enough. At one level it seems a clear job – to improve the skill levels of the players at your disposal.
But how clear is that? “The concept of a coach is slippery. Coaches are not teachers, but they teach. They’re not your boss — in professional tennis, golf, and skating, the athlete hires and fires the coach — but they can be bossy.
“They don’t even have to be good at the sport. The famous Olympic gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi couldn’t do a split if his life depended on it. Mainly, they observe, they judge, and they guide.”
The above is taken from an outstanding piece written for the New Yorker by Atul Gawande, one of these annoying people who dashes off considered essays for a quality magazine in the hours he can spare from his full-time job as a surgeon.
Gawande discusses coaching in real-life situations – his own, to be precise, as he tries to improve his surgical performance by inviting an old mentor into the operating theatre to give notes on his performance (note: on a non-sports point, there are observations in the article to give the reader a little pause. The revelation that a surgeon with his elbows up in the air isn’t doing a very good job is bad enough, but the suggestion that some surgeons don’t even shine their lights into the wounds they’re operating in... well, it made your columnist clear his throat a couple of times).
Coaching a good inter-county hurling team must be a fairly daunting prospect, the more you think of it: anyone who’s gone to watch such teams train will see for the most part a command of the sliotar that lesser mortals can only dream of. In that context this column found it interesting to hear Eamonn O’Shea, the former Tipperary coach, say over coffee earlier this year that he didn’t have mystery drills or unusual coaching practices, but relied on about half-a-dozen drills for the most part.
At the top level the room for improvement may be marginal, but small things make a difference. Small differences, maybe, but small differences add up.
“In sports, coaches focus on mechanics, conditioning, and strategy, and have ways to break each of those down, in turn,” says Gawande.
“The UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, at the first squad meeting each season, even had his players practice putting their socks on. He demonstrated just how to do it: he carefully rolled each sock over his toes, up his foot, around the heel, and pulled it up snug, then went back to his toes and smoothed out the material along the sock’s length, making sure there were no wrinkles or creases.
“He had two purposes in doing this. First, wrinkles cause blisters. Blisters cost games. Second, he wanted his players to learn how crucial seemingly trivial details could be.”
By the way, the last part of the ‘package’ may be the trickiest: the other selector(s).
A man who has been on the line for more than one All-Ireland victory summed the challenge up thus: “Everybody wants to be on the sideline pointing outfield for this switch or that switch. Nobody wants to arrange challenge matches, or sort out a training field, or ring some player’s boss for a favour, but that has to be done too.”
To summarise: if you’re a county looking for a new manager, or a new management package, you have your hands full. You may get a manager, you may get a coach, but can you get everyone to work together? With respect to Atul Gawande, that’s more a matter of chemistry than biology.
* Contact: michael.moynihan@examiner.ie
Twitter: MikeMoynihanEx
