Dividing young GAA players by ability can be ‘very beneficial’

‘Streaming brought a sense of continuity. It brought a sense of an identity, being part of a team.’

Dividing young GAA players into teams based on their ability can be “very beneficial” if done correctly, a new study has found.

PhD researcher Dr David Moran, formerly a games promotion officer at various Dublin clubs, said the issue of GAA “streaming” is an emotive one for parents and their children.

The process involves separating young players into different teams based on their ability — and is a topical issue as coaches put plans in place for the year ahead.

“During my time as a games promotion officer, the question about streaming was the one that I was asked about more than any other topic,” Dr Moore said.

“This question was brought to me on at least a weekly basis for eight years, and I never really had an answer to give them, because there was no research, and there was nothing there for coaches.”

Research paper

Mr Moore said his qualitative research paper, Grouping By Ability In Youth Sport: Streaming In Gaelic Games, is the first of its kind to examine sentiments and experiences of streaming.

It was carried out as part of a wider project in collaboration with the GAA, Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics and the Coaching and Expertise Lab (CoEx Lab) in Dublin City University.

Over the course of two months, Mr Moore interviewed 85 players, parents and coaches on the side of pitches at various clubs, both urban and rural, across Ireland.

He said he expected “a lot of push back” against streaming but did not find that sentiment among parents, coaches and players.

“There was very, very little push back against streaming in and of itself,” he said.

“There was frustration about how it was done but there was no real frustration or negativity towards it.”

He said among the themes from his research was that streaming children into teams based on ability created a sense of continuity, and also challenged children appropriately when done correctly.

“If it’s completely mixed ability and somebody’s coaching, they’re dealing with 70-80 kids on the side of the pitch, it’s almost crowd control, people are put into groups (randomly), and then every Saturday when they go to play a game, they’re playing with different kids, and there’s different coaches, and there was no continuity from week to week.

“Streaming brought a sense of continuity. It brought a sense of an identity, being part of a team. The kids spoke really highly about that, the parents really recognise the value of that as well.”

Level of challenge

He said another theme was the idea of an appropriate level of challenge.

“So a lot of people reflected on prior to the introduction of streaming, the stronger kids being able to completely dominate games, and some of the weaker kids being left behind or not really being involved in the game.

“In that situation, neither of those two kids is getting a really good challenge to help them develop.

“Streaming has the ability, has the potential anyway, to provide an appropriate level of challenge."

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He did say people were frustrated by how resources are allocated, by organisational constraints to streaming, and in particular by the use of streaming to win matches.

“There were reflections from a lot of parents - parents particularly and coaches of kind of lower ability teams - that the A team get the best training slots, and they get the best equipment, they get the new set of jerseys, and they’re the ones who get the social media posts, and the B team or the C team or the D team tend to not get their fair allocation.”