GAA return to play: Our experts on how coaches can get kids back on the pitch - and enjoying the game
It’s vital that we reconnect with and re-engage young people back into structured sport as quickly as possible. However, we must remember that their experiences over the past few months have been around unstructured play on greens and play areas. They have self-organised games and have maybe really enjoyed the freedom this type of play has afforded them. Coaches must ensure that they allow children some sense of autonomy when they return to their clubs and ease them back into structured activity. If they over-coach or over-structure sessions, they might lose some children very quickly due to new found love of free play. Obviously many children can’t wait for club activity to return but for many others, these last few months have shone a new light on play and enjoyable autonomous experiences. We must make sure we can offer something similar on their return.
Kids are not mini-adults. Don't fall into the trap of downgrading or adapting what you do with adult teams and applying it to kids teams. It's got to be fun and engaging first off and it comes down to the fundamentals of playing the sport. I was listening to Johnny Giles recently talking about learning the game in the square out the front of his house, kicking a makeshift ball around. Maradona, Messi, Ronaldo, same story. Too often coaching with kids goes away from those core skills and fundamentals, and kids love that sort of training.
You’d hope maybe the novelty will give clubs a bounce, that kids will be so glad to get the chance to get back playing. There might be a bit of fall-off but I’d say in some clubs, particularly in rural areas, they’ll nearly go door to door to drag them back. What’s crucial is that there isn’t some dog down the field who’ll make lines of three and six minutes in the middle — it has to be mini-games, or seven-a-side, and making it all fun for them.
I think the biggest thing we're all trying to bring, and Micheál Quirke would have spoken about it here in Laois, is a game sense approach. Some common sense is required here but coaches can hit the ground running with plenty of skill work and small sided games. Use small pitches, change the dimensions of the pitches, those things can alleviate the strain on players and make it more enjoyable. Introduce plenty of games.
Well it has to be fun, that's where it all starts. Aside from my S&C work, I have all my coaching badges in both rugby and GAA and in all of that it always comes back to making it fun and enjoyable. They've been so long without playing that it needs to be a fun environment for them to return to; fun games, skill based sessions and some athletic development but in a fun way. If that means being creative then get creative.
That’s down to the warmth of the welcome, making the experience really enjoyable, showing that the club is a place where you have fun when you go down there. That means catering to them all — the fanatics who’ve been out pucking or kicking around since lockdown began, the kids who are obsessed with the sport, as well as the kids who maybe are a bit unsure about the games. You have to balance the approach and make it all about having fun, making that connection.
That's easy, play football. I'm the U15 manager with my own club Crossmaglen Rangers and we had our first training session recently after the restrictions were eased here. The first night out it was all football. It was ball handling, ball exercises. They all had a ball each. Just doing skills training. It's all open drills in our club, no box drills. They were like young lambs going back at it. They loved it.
This is very simple! Think about what these kids love about the GAA and playing games, fun with team-mates, the challenge to improve- and give them that. Set up your sessions with all these components in mind, not what you want to do yourself as a coach. This is a period certainly to ‘look through the eyes of the child’ when designing your session plans and programme age-appropriate activities from that viewpoint. Give them what they missed out on during lockdown. They’ll thank you for it.
I’m fascinated with this because I have a family who all love sport. By the time we play our first league game, it will be five months since there was a game of live football or hurling on TV. Since the weather’s turned, my youngest fella goes out to the green in front of the house to play soccer and it might be five v five or six v six but before every game they take the knee like they do in the Premier League. That’s what is influencing kids at the moment. They’re seeing no GAA at the moment. A popular show in our house is “The Cycling Goalkeeper” on YouTube about the Watford goalkeeper Ben Foster who cycles to training and puts a GoPro behind his goals for matches and it’s fascinating. Children are getting their media from different outlets and we need to offer them something tangible like that. The Cúl and summer camps are coming up and we need to see our top inter-county stars more. The GAA has to move with the modern trends that engage children. When the first training session happens, it has to be hugely fun. We have to be inclusive coaches and have the kids smiling and giving them lots of games. I would nearly hope there are more games than training.
The enjoyment piece has to be at the centre of the coach’s plan. You engage kids in decision-making tasks and make sure they have opportunities to socialise with their peers in games. There has to be game-time for all. Every player has to made feel part of it because research show that is when they enjoy training most. It also shows that when they have autonomy, when they don’t have to be told they engage more. That can be done by games, more than drills and not queueing.
My three kids have just gone back and in a way it has to be a mirror image of what is going on with adults. It has to be fun and there can’t be any laps, sprints or anything like that. Kids should be fit - I know not all of them are - but everything should be done with a mind to bringing a smile to their face.
That means the ball is involved in everything so that the kids don’t realise what they’re doing is fitness. At this stage, kids need fun back in their lives, they really do.
The instructions have to be kept to a minimum, especially the first couple of weeks. Only the most fun drills and games should make up the sessions. You want every kid absolutely busting to go to the next session. They should be buzzing for the first one back but the test is wanting them to come back for more.
In my experience, most underage players are mad for road and can’t wait to get back playing. The social element and reconnecting with their friends is vital and needs to be factored in. Rekindling that love of the game won’t be an issue for the majority and as the Sultans of Ping FC famously advised “Give him a ball and a yard of grass”. Breaking the cycle of passivity that has prevailed for the last while and getting everyone active again may be a bigger challenge. What they have missed most is the competitive element. Training has to be fun and enjoyable for them, and matches will need to be plentiful when we move beyond the non-contact stage.
Chat with players and see how they are. Play games with scores kept, have skills challenges, and overall a bit of craic never goes astray. Some young players, through no fault of their own, may not have had much chance to develop themselves in the time off. Be patient and give them small achievable short-term goals to get the feelgood factor going early.
That won’t be an issue because I believe our young players are absolutely raring to go. What is important is that training is made enjoyable and not onerous, so playing as many little games as possible is a surefire way to deliver that enjoyment. But I don’t think that will be hard achieved because I was chatting to a teacher the other evening and he couldn’t believe how many kids are out the back with hurls playing away. They didn’t have such numbers wanting to play before lockdown, but now, school pitches are full. Youngsters just want to get out and meet their friends. They’re bursting with energy.
I really believe so many of our young players across the country are living for the moment that they can get back onto the pitches with their friends. It is then incumbent on us coaches to meet this enthusiasm wholeheartedly. We need to keep at the front of our minds in the planning of those first days back that it was the games, the friends and the freedom that was missed most. It is always good to remember that we are their coaches, but that’s not the same as saying they are our players. We serve them. The last lines in the poem ‘Sweet Darkness’ by David Whyte says “Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you”. This is the challenge to all of us who coach – to connect before we ever try to correct.
I don't think falling back in love with the sport is going to be an issue, once the game is presented to them in the right way. What I mean by that is that the coaching is skills-based, there are small games, and kids play, enjoy, and have loads of nurture. I do feel sorry for kids that they are missing out on the fun that comes with matchday where everyone packs onto a bus and the enjoyment that is had coming to and from a game, stopping off on the way back for a bit grub and the laughter. The social parts of our game are all missing at the moment. And that is a large part of why people do this.
Q: Explain in some detail how you go about achieving that, citing on-field examples with the ball?
Non-contact sessions due to return to play guidelines pose some issues with session design but we could be creative and maybe for the first number of sessions, we could try and mirror some of the activities the children have enjoyed over the last few months. These activities would purely focus on fun and enjoyment and maybe we could let the children run their own games — and coaches simply stand back. By doing so these sessions would belong more to the children and may re-engage them quicker.
I wouldn’t be overly concerned as to where the children are at in terms of skills or fitness right now. It’s all about reconnection and making them want to come back again for the next session once they return. We must be patient and keep the end in mind.
If you threw a ball in between five kids, what would they do intuitively? That's a great starting point for coaching kids. Don't wait on perfect, it's not going to happen. Try to work around what's natural. Yes, look for a set outcome but know that you can achieve that many ways. You can introduce hopscotch, have target derbies, crossbar challenges, strike balls through a tyre hanging out of a crossbar. But whatever you're doing, you have to be very clear why you're doing it and what you want to achieve. I had a senior team once and we threw away the balls and played a game of tag. It had twisting, turning, acceleration, stopping. They enjoyed it and I got the outcome I was looking for. Win, win.
With the smallies you still have to do the basics — I never took a team younger than U14s and looking at the lads who train small kids I’d wonder if I’d have the patience for it, getting them to even stand still — but with kids big and small it’s also about fun, about having games. There’s lots of content out there for them but you have to incentivise it for them, to make it fun for them — and telling that to Mammy and Daddy, so they know how much they’re enjoying it.
The nights are stretching now too, so there shouldn’t be any drudgery in it even for older age groups. Backs and forwards and mixed matches rather than loads of drills.
Obviously you're trying to let players have as many touches of the ball as they can. That's your starting point. Again, changing the pitch dimensions and changing the numbers in your games can help with that. It could be anything from six v six, eight v eight up to 10 v 10. You're building that up then towards full games with an emphasis on getting as many touches as you can. Over the course of a number of sessions, you'll see visible improvements. By week two or three you'll see things getting more and more dynamic.
I haven't found many kids that don't love a race, so figure out some different races, throw in the ball and turn them into skill based activities. When they haven't repped the skills of the game for a long time it's not going to be perfect, that's okay. They can be working on their speed while getting plenty of touches. Keep the warm ups skill based. Yes, you're including your fundamental movements in that but there's scope for ball work in all of these things.
To me it mightn’t be all about ‘ready position, ready to hook’ as soon as they get out on the field.
It might be more about putting the hurleys down for a while and doing exercises that focus on enjoyment and coordination — ship to shore, for instance, or British Bulldog, maybe using obstacle courses. If they’re a bit bigger, then some of the skill-based challenges we’ve seen online could come into play, maybe with a little prize at the end.
: I would look at it a different way. As a club, we're trying to take the approach that if we're going to ask kids to learn and develop then we've got to create an atmosphere for learning and development around them. The sessions are all about inclusion, skill development, experimenting. Yes, you're guiding them but you're critiquing them. There are loads of balls, loads of movement from fellas. For the most part there's no straight line stuff at all. There are no laps, no timed things, just as much ball work and expression as possible. That's the environment and the space we're trying to create.
A session plan is like a jig-saw puzzle- there are many components to it; it can at times look a bit messy; but when the appropriate pieces are plugged into place, it can look a beautiful thing. Think of your session as that blank puzzle where you plug in different activities- warm up, games, shooting, principles of play and game scenarios. Rotate your warm ups with social, team building and chasing games. Skill and teammate relationship building can be passing and catching in 3s or 6s. And play lots of different modified games with attack v defence match scenarios.
Anything for youth and child should be the ball. Lots of SSGs (small-sided games) should be on the menu. Sessions should start with loads of touches and game-like movements. Handling games, three v threes, four v fours, no man’s land. Keep away from structures and lines. Allow the kids to build up their game-like movement and perceptions because if they have done nothing for five months they will need that. A lot of parents aren’t into coaching and they bring the kids down to the GAA clubs to get involved in something. So those kids haven’t done much or anything in a good while so it’s important to get them doing things they like and shooting would be one of them. Avoiding big lines and queues and making sure they have ample touches of the ball is key.
You have to invest time in planning. If players feel coming to training that it is a well-organised session they can get a lot out of enjoyment out of that. Also, when the coaches are designing tasks that they have a few simple things like games that produce numbers. By having that, it increases involvement and the number of touches a player gets. Games with conditions that emphasise required behaviours and allocating specific roles to players so that they feel a sense of responsibility and ownership are really beneficial. Making a player a captain for the session or the organiser of the defence, players can really buy into that. You have to reward all players, not just superstars. If a player improves relative to their standard, they mightn’t be the best player but acknowledging that can really instil a sense of enjoyment and a sense of worth. Developmentally, those tasks have to be appropriate so the player has to be able to achieve success if they have been given that responsibility.
If a coach does feel his panel needs a bit of fitness work, grand, do your sprints or whatever that may be but make sure the kids have the ball or sliotar in their when they’re doing it. So a solo with the hurley and sliotar and maybe a toe-tap and solo with the football. Make it something rather than just a sprint. If it’s a point-scoring drill that they’re doing, make the child run 20 metres and then have a shot at the goal. Something that doesn’t involve running just for the sake of it.
Keep the games small and tight so that each child gets as much of the ball as possible. Their heart-rate will be higher in those situations and they will have less time to think which will speed up their decision-making and their spacial awareness will improve but there has to be an understanding as well for them and the coaches that mistakes are going to happen and it’s okay for them to happen. They won’t have time to dwell on errors because as soon as the ball has been given away or lost it will be back with them and that’s part of the beauty of small-sided games.
Age-appropriate sessions two to three times a week will help to get the players back into the habit of training, thus providing them with a healthy focus. Coaches will need to be creative initially and organise non-contact skills competitions, fun games, and team building exercises with and without the ball that will add to the fun element. Conditioned games, scenario-based football, backs and forwards, and open football can all be used to ensure that the football is at the centre of everything when permitted. Mini-leagues or parish leagues should be encouraged if you are fortunate enough to have the numbers.
Set up teams (maybe six-seven players) to have races getting a ball up and down the pitch by kicking and fist passing every second skill and see how they set themselves up. Have a kick the ball around the square competition, with four players per team. Crossbar challenge. Mini blitzes, if contact is allowed. Longest kick competition. End line challenge. The list goes on. Competition and fun can be combined.
Small little five-a-side games. Even at the inter-county level, they are the sort of games that the players enjoy, while such games are also brilliant to improve the first touch.
If you are asking young players to do laps of the field or work on their skills without an element of fun or competition incorporated into the drill, that’s not going to work. Fun and enjoyment have to be top of the agenda.
I am of the view that every session – and not just the first sessions back – provide the opportunity for a fresh start. I have found a useful way of remembering this and grounding myself to use the acronym FRESH START.
create a consistent environment that informs decisions and actions.
genuine regard to all and their story.
to view things from their point of view.
committed to what is said and what we do.
to honestly accept and fully acknowledge one’s strengths and weaknesses.
a consistency of manner and interaction.
to give thought to what you say and do, and how you say and do it.
to accept that everybody knows something that you don’t.
to accept and face up to the good with the not so good of what life throws.
for all efforts made and for the opportunities that working with people allows.
: It doesn't make a difference whether you are 10 or 30, you still want to have a bit of craic when you are training. That is paramount. There are so many different ways to achieve that. I remember we did a scoring session with the Dublin lads a couple of years ago and the objective was to put the ball over the bar, but when they were trying to do that, we had fellas throwing tennis balls at them from the shoulder down to try and distract them. And the craic we had doing silly things like that, while simultaneously teaching them to keep the mechanics the same regardless of the distraction.
Read More
I think the balance is achieved through games. When the initial re-engaging period is completed and Covid regulations allow it, the focus should be on games ranging from 3v3 to large 15v15 games. Very young children could play even smaller games, like 1v1 or 2v2. These games can focus on skill development or principles of play and dovetail nicely with physical development also. Obviously, some speed and agility work could be completed after the warm-up but in my opinion, the sessions should focus on learning how to understand and play the game.
The way I'd answer that is you need to be fit enough. You can't be so focused on fitness that it's to the detriment of the skills. The sport is the most important thing at the end of the day. And you will get fitness through playing the sport itself too. It comes back to being robust enough to get out and play your sport. Any work you do away from sport should help you with that.
The majority of them buzz back and forwards like wasps, they’re full of energy. The thing to watch is if they’re that bit older, 16 or so, there could be a few of them that need a bit of work — kids who’ve overdone the treats during lockdown, which is understandable given how unprecedented the times are. And that’s not with a view to winning matches at all — it’s for their health and just getting them back into good habits.
It’s something that has to be dealt with very sensitively, but getting those kids fit and healthy is part of it as well.
I think most teams now are trying to do as much as they can with a ball. I think the days of purely fitness sessions are nearly gone. I know in Laois, across the board, there's an emphasis on getting as much ball work into players as you can. Yes, you can have little break outs of conditioning work but it's shorter, snappier stuff. We would do a 1.2km test, 12 x 100m sprints, it's over in four or five minutes. The same thing applies at underage level, you're getting as much good work in with the ball as possible.
This is a challenge for every S&C coach in the country at all levels, underage and adult. Game based activities are a great way of getting that balance right and ticking both boxes. When I played for Munster I found you could have your hardest pre-season ever and then go into your first game and find it a struggle. It takes a couple of games to get the conditioning up to the levels you want. Don't expect it to happen straight away.
This is an area which needs a bit of sensitivity, I’d agree with Anthony’s point about the older underage players coming back in and needing some fitness training.
I’m speaking as someone who carried weight all his life, and I know that you can tell players they need to get fitter, but unless you’re careful you can do so in a manner that can set a player back.
That could be a conversation you might have with a parent on the QT as opposed to taking the old-school approach, maybe roaring at a player that he’s not fit or that he got too fond of the pies over the lockdown. That can’t happen. That kind of thing is long gone.
And that’s why I’d emphasise the introduction of fun, and enjoyable skills challenges — and then you can subtly introduce more fitness work if needed. But in a general sense it’s an area I’d be inclined to leave alone when it comes to kids.
: You try to do the two in one, it's pretty straightforward really. The same thing applies to the kids as the adults, without so much of the intensity. Let's say if they're doing some ball work and there's movement and there's kick-passing, then there's a huge amount of running involved in that. That in itself is going to improve fitness. With our (Crossmaglen) U-15s last year we almost did no fitness running on its own. The championship was cancelled because of Covid, we were in the semi-finals and we felt we had a really good chance of winning. We were developing really nicely and getting that balance between fitness and skill work through the games and the natural movements.
There is no balance between regaining fitness and ball work for underage players returning to playing. There is no fitness development needed, in the traditional sense. Focus on the ball, the games and making your activities fun, challenging and developmental. There is, however, a misunderstood concept out there that everything needs to be done with the ball- it doesn’t. Enjoyable age- appropriate locomotive skills development and fundamental physical literacy skills can be done with and/or without the ball. Develop their agility, change of direction, decision making and speed in competitive situations, along with the ability to acceleration and decelerate at speed.
In fairness to the GAA, they are rolling out return to play tutorials for children and adults. They’re going to be ran through each county’s coaching sections and they’ll be giving coaches some information on work-to-rest ratios and things like that. It will be important for coaches to remember the STEP (Space, Time/Task, Equipment, Players) principle, which will help you organise and change the direction of your training sessions. By you changing any of that, you’re changing your whole approach to training. For example, if you have a three v three hand-passing drill in a 20 by 20 metre grid, if you change that to 40 by 40m, you’re then challenging the kids’ stamina. It’s a really handy acronym for coaches to remember and you can do it without stopping.
: For under-age, I’d be strong on taking a holistic approach. There is enough research out there that physical fitness and technical and tactical work can be achieved in tandem within the one well-designed task. Games aren’t the silver bullet for everything. They can be hugely beneficial but the caveat is they have to be put together properly with specific learning and physical outcomes in mind. Coaches have to benchmark their practice task design with those objectives in mind. When that’s done, you can achieve high levels in physical fitness accompanied with your technical and tactical outcomes. Given the shortened nature of this season, I believe coaches will get more bang for their buck with that holistic approach than they would by going with them as exclusive, separate components.
If you spend 80% of the session with the ball and then the last 10 minutes you do your wee top-ups with metabolic work and some running without the ball at least they have enjoyed the vast majority of the session and they have a bit of fitness in the bank. If you do that twice a week with the kids, they won’t be long getting up to speed. What you don’t want now is kids being flogged and saying to their parents that they want to play something else.
The Tipp minor footballers have been doing a good bit on their own so I imagine they will have a decent base when they return to their clubs. They will have time to be right for championship because that’s not going to take place in the short term. For younger players, the balance has to be right because we are in strange times and you want to foster the love they had for the game and hope it continues. No coach wants to turn a player off the sport and the best way to do that is getting players to work as a team and with the ball.
A games based approach. The players will get physically fit again with the ball. This further feeds into the enjoyment factor. Underage players have little interest in physical work. These games can be intensified as the weeks and months pass. As the games start to come thick and fast, the match fitness will return. Be patient with this and go up through the gears gradually. Concentrate on the two f’s, football and fun, and everything else will follow.
At underage, take your time. There won’t be games for a while so don’t rush in. Start with steady state runs and gradually condense them into high intensity multidirectional. Play tight hand passing games for agility/contact, if allowed. Run conditioned drills with different distance runs involved in them to give players varied stimulus running and skillswise. Start easy and develop, don’t overwork the physio in early May!
Focus on the skills. When you are working with the ball in hand and when you are working on your first touch, you are getting fitness work in even if the players might not realise it. Back with Kilkenny, we could start a session with 15 minutes of drill work. The girls enjoyed working on their skills without realising that they were also getting through 15 minutes of running. I would appeal to any underage coach to focus on the skills and not be slogging children by running them around a pitch. Fitness will come through ball work. I find it mind boggling to see young kids being asked to run laps of pitches.
It is my opinion that ball work will always outweigh fitness. Nobody goes to a match to admire the fitness of a player. We go to see her or him play, to see the magic of the skill and those moments where a player chooses the right skill, at the right time, and in the right place. Fitness, conditioning, and every other facet of the sport supplements the ability of a player to use the ball. The games centre on two phases – attacking or defending the goal. It then makes logical sense to focus all, or at least most of our activities, on attacking or defending a goal. We must not fall into the trap of mindless straight-line drills under the guise of ‘first touch’ work. Last touch satisfaction is key to every good feeling in sport. As children, we all had an active imagination. As coaches, we need to tap back into this imagination and design our sessions accordingly.
Modified games are the answer, such as small-sided games. But know what you want to achieve, don't just run a modified game for the sake of a modified game. What's your objective? If you know what you are looking to try and achieve, you have a much better opportunity of guaranteeing the outcome by developing the game with a view to what you want the end result to look like.
strength and conditioning expert has coached the Ireland rugby team as well as St Helens, three Ireland International Rules sides and Armagh senior football teams.
is the Cork U20 football manager. He led the county to All-Ireland U20 championship glory in 2019. The St Vincent’s native is the GAA Development Officer at the Cork campus of the Munster Technological University.
managed Kilkenny to All-Ireland senior camogie success in 2016, the county’s first in 22 years. As a player, she won 12 All-Ireland medals.
has not lost a championship game during his second spell as Dublin ladies football manager, steering the county to the last four All-Ireland titles. The PE teacher served as skills coach in Jim Gavin’s backroom team for Dublin’s All-Ireland U21 and senior wins in 2010 and 2013.
is the Meath senior football coach and has published a coaching manual “Gaelic Football - Game Based Training Activities”.
is the Tipperary senior football physical trainer having previously worked with Laois. He is Shane Lowry’s fitness coach and has won three of Ireland’s amateur golf majors.
was the coach for Limerick’s 2018 and 2020 All-Ireland SHC victories and was on the sideline for Clare’s Liam MacCarthy triumph in 2013
is a former London senior football manager and current sport scientist at QPR FC Academy and doing a PhD in monitoring fatigue and recovery. He runs an online coaching & sport science website www.DeelySportScience.com
is a chartered physiotherapist who founded and runs the Laois Physiotherapy Clinic in Portlaoise. John is part of the Laois hurling backroom team for 2021. Previous roles include Kerry senior football team physical trainer, Laois senior football manager, and Kerry U20 manager.
has worked as a fitness coach with a number of inter-county teams including the All-Ireland winning Clare (2013) and Limerick (2018) hurling teams. He is a lecturer in exercise physiology at MTU.
is the Laois footballers’ strength and conditioning expert. The Ballyfin man worked with Bristol Rugby in the UK for almost a decade before joining Laois in late 2019.
is Meath GAA’s head of strength and conditioning. He is a former Munster and Ireland rugby player and lined out for home club St Colmcilles in the 2017 All-Ireland club intermediate final at Croke Park.
Former Mayo coach is the Sligo senior football manager and is also in charge of his native club Crossmaglen Rangers’ U-15s. He was an All-Ireland SFC medallist with Armagh in 2002 and won All-Ireland club titles with Cross’ both as a player and joint-manager.
is a member of an illustrious group of men who won All-Irelands as a player and a manager having guided Kerry to Championship honours in 2014.
s a former Cork senior football manager who completed a PhD on the development of young GAA players between the ages of 14 and 17.
is a former Waterford senior hurling manager who brought the team to an All-Ireland final in 2017.
is a two-time All- Ireland winning captain who has managed his native Clare along with Dublin and numerous club sides.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
