Giving coaches power with touch of a button

How would you like to be able to track every coaching session of every team — from U10 to senior — in your own GAA club?

Not alone that, how would you like to be able to track the sessions of every individual player on all those panels? How would you like to be able to measure and track from year to year the progress of each of those teams, the progress of each of those players? How would you like to be able to take a session as devised by a fully-trained full-time modern coach and apply it — with your own adaptation — to your own teams?

It can be done, says Damien Lee and Richie McCarthy, the two people behind a new and innovative Irish company, Gaelcoach.

Lee already has a successful company up and running, Coaching Data, a player management system used by top English clubs such as Manchester City, Arsenal, Everton and Fulham, as well as Bayern Munich in Germany. McCarthy is the current Limerick senior hurling full-back, but he is also a full-time coach with an honours degree in recreation and sport management at Waterford Institute of Technology.

Between them, and using their own software designers, the pair have devised a system which will do all of the above and more, a system they are now ready to roll out.

Big club or small, club or county, colleges at second or third level, hurling, football, camogie, ladies’ football — all can benefit from the technology, according to Lee.

“It’s data-based but because it’s a club management system it encompasses everything a club does, with the focus on the training side of things. The coaches record everything into the Gaelcoach system and you have an option then to examine all the different areas — attacking drills, defensive drills, skill work, retaining possession, restarts, puck-outs, one-v-one attacker against defender — and see where the work is being neglected. Everything is logged into the system and as the year progresses you can build up a profile of what’s being done with the team, and break that down again to see what every individual player is doing, or missing as the case may be.

It’s not just for training sessions either, says McCarthy. “You can also do it for matches. After every match the coach can sit down and write his assessment of each player, make his comments on where mistakes were made, where improvements can be made, and that information stays in the system. How often after a game does a coach or a player himself immediately forget the details?

“Under this system that can’t happen, you build up a more complete picture. Maybe you have a player who keeps hitting the ball wide on the same side — this will help you identify problems like that.

“The players themselves can log into the system, into their own profile, but it can also be kept private — that’s up to the coach himself and whether or not he wants to give feedback to the player in this way.”

Sounds exciting and a constructive use of modern technology, but it surely also means extra work for the coach and his management team? McCarthy agrees, but with a caveat. “Yes it is extra work, but we believe it’s worth it because of the extra reward. It doesn’t take very long to record the data, a lot of it will be from a drop-down menu so you won’t be manually typing everything in, instead you will be just ticking or unticking.

“The software is very sophisticated, but you don’t have to use the whole package,” adds Lee; “You decide what you want to use and as you get more comfortable with it, you can use the more advanced features.

“People will have different levels of enthusiasm for it. Even if people aren’t computer-literate themselves they surely know someone who is and they can put in the information. We believe this would be a serious tool for any ambitious club. It leaves control of what’s happening with the coach, but it gives him instant access to all the information he needs. It’s even more critical at underage levels where the coaches at the various grades can compare from year to year what work is being done with the players on a team basis and on an individual basis, and where everything is done on a progressive basis — you don’t want a player going from U12 to U14, for example, and finding himself going backwards, or even just standing still.”

And the cost? “There are two parts to it,” Lee explains, “a sign-up fee of €250 and then an annual maintenance fee of €300. We’re taking the Ryanair financial model, keep the price low, but sign up as many clubs as possible! It’s a central web-based system, but every club has exclusive access to its own data, each club can design its own particular training system. We have devised 10 categories based on Richie’s own experience as a qualified coach, but they can tweak that or they can go and design their own unique system.”

Sounds like a no-brainer really, sport science not just made accessible but made local. “If I had had this when I was 18 I’d have loved it,” says Richie. “This is the first year in which I’ve really monitored my body weight, body fat, all those measurements that tell you how you’re progressing — you can compare with where you were last year for example. But why has it taken this long for me to understand all that? There’s a lot of fitness work going on in every club now, but why not monitor all that, have a record of it?

“If you’re not improving you know you’re doing something wrong. It’s a year-round programme, even carries on year after year. There are all kinds of additional records you can keep — physical injuries, how they happen, to who, the timing; the physio visits, any medical visits. All those are important. All we need is one night with all the club coaches to show them how to use the system, about an hour, and off they go.

“It sounds a very grand system but it’s not at all complicated, everyone gets to know their own job very quickly. The main thing is to get up and running, because this is a long-term project in any club. Get is started for what’s left of this year and then by next season you’ll be fully acquainted with every aspect of it and should see the results.”