World experts gather at Croker for development conference

THE GAA have lined up two overseas experts to address their annual ‘Games Development Conference’ which is expected to attract over 700 delegates to Croke Park on November 28/29.

The theme of the conference is ‘A games-based approach to training and development’ and one of the keynote speakers will be Richard Shuttleworth, who is the Skill Acquisition Specialist with the Australian Institute of Sport.

Additionally, Dr Bryan McCullick of the Department of Kinesiology of the University of Georgia in the US will be attending. The subject of his address will be “becoming an expert coach”.

The list of speakers almost represents a who’s who of available specialists in different fields, among them Professor Niall Moyna from DCU, Eugene Young, the Ulster Council’s Director of Coaching, All-Ireland-winning club football manger Mickey Whelan, Wexford manager Jason Ryan, Kilkenny hurling selector Martin Fogarty, Defence Forces Chief of Staff Lt General Dermot Earley and Eamonn Ryan, coach to the Cork Ladies Football team which recently completed the four-in-a-row.

GAA President Nickey Brennan formally launched the conference, which is again sponsored by Lucozade Sport. He expressed his delight that the issue of burnout has been dealt with “spectacular success” over the last two Special Congresses, saying this was a tribute to the work of Dr Pat O’Neill and his committee in educating people to the need of “valuing their players”.

In the way the committee highlighted the level at which players were being “overexposed”, he said it showed that the development of young people had to take very different factors into account.

Jimmy Darcy, the GAA’s Games Development Manager stated that they viewed games development as “a four-pronged approach”. “Games opportunities are at the very heart of that, as are the provision of appropriate opportunities for young players, developing players and elite players. Aligned to that we have skills development initiatives, like our schools of excellence and our development squads and we are trying to integrate that expertise into our programmes with the cooperation and assistance of Coaching Ireland.’’

He pointed out that they will be launching a revised coach education programme at the conference and this will specifically address the needs of their three constituent player groups — children, youth and adults.

Other speakers were Peter Horgan, GAA Education Officer and Elizabeth Reynolds, General Manager, Consumer Healthcare, GlaxoSmithKline.