Club Management: The Human Challenge Behind Modern GAA Teams
This is a major week for the hurlers in Tipperary who don the club colours in the hope of achieving success. All of the work undertaken in the last six months comes down to one weekend when the final round of the county championship round-robin kicks into play.
However, it is also a massive weekend for all those managers and coaches who have spent hours and hours outside of the training field, plotting, planning, holding meetings, discussing tactics, analysing opposition, coaxing players, challenging them and trying to get every last morsel out of them without tipping them over the edge. It’s a full time job and it occupies the thoughts of many people around Tipperary this week as the big weekend approaches.
Managing a modern GAA team is no longer simply about picking fifteen players, organising training and shouting instructions from the sideline. That world is gone. Today’s manager is trying to lead a group of young men whose lives are already stretched to breaking point — by work, college, relationships, family, social commitments and the relentless pressure of modern life.
These are amateur players. We should never forget that.
They are expected to train two, three or even four nights a week, play at weekends, attend gym sessions, follow nutritional plans, recover properly and turn up mentally prepared to perform. Then Monday morning arrives and they are expected to go to work, attend lectures, sit exams, build careers and somehow maintain relationships and friendships. For a twenty-something, the temptation to say, “I’m going out tonight,” is not some great moral failure.
It is a perfectly normal desire to have a life. Weddings, Grads and Debs, college functions – even funerals – all play important parts in the life of people and yet at the back of the mind there is always the pull of the reins to ensure that they don’t lose the run of themselves. Sometimes growing up, maturing and just living life at that age requires galloping on that run-away horse before eventually the animal clams down.
And then there is alcohol. There are drugs. Pretending otherwise is naïve. Managers are dealing with young adults, not monks. The challenge is not to become the morality police. It is to establish standards, boundaries and consequences while recognising the world these players actually inhabit.
A manager who believes he can control every aspect of a player’s private life will quickly lose the dressing room. But a manager who ignores the realities of that life will lose the team. This is where man-management becomes every bit as important as team management.
The player struggling with college; the lad whose relationship has broken down; the player exhausted by work perhaps having commuted to training each evening from miles away; the substitute who feels overlooked; the talented player whose confidence has collapsed; the young man drinking too much; the player dealing with something he does not feel able to discuss.
These issues do not appear on a team sheet, but they walk into the dressing room every night with the same goal as everybody else, but perhaps with the baggage which is holding them back and dragging them down.
A good manager must know his players — not just their strengths, weaknesses and preferred positions, but the human beings behind the jerseys. Sometimes the hardest part of management is knowing when to push and when to back off. When to demand more from the individual and the team. When to put an arm around a shoulder and encourage. When to challenge a player and when simply to listen.
But no manager can do all this alone – not anymore, not in the modern game and with the demands of modern life.
The modern GAA manager needs a proper support structure: selectors, coaches, strength and conditioning personnel, physios, medical support, administrators and, where possible, people capable of providing genuine welfare and pastoral support. Otherwise the manager becomes coach, counsellor, disciplinarian, psychologist, administrator and crisis manager all rolled into one.
That is unsustainable. A quick look at the Tipperary GAA programmes will reveal ever expanding backroom teams with the hurling and football panels – this is not a luxury, this is a necessity.
The modern GAA player demands more from a management team than ever before. But management must also demand something in return: commitment, honesty, discipline and respect. Players have to acknowledge that, by-and-large, managements are there at their own cost in terms of input and time away from their families. For the few who are recompensed for their efforts, there are the vast majority who are not, and who do it because they love their club and want to see their players develop and progress.
The winning team is not simply the team with the best players.
It is the team where people feel valued, standards are clear, problems are confronted rather than buried, and everyone understands that wearing the jersey comes with responsibility. That is the real challenge of modern GAA management. And increasingly, it is every bit as difficult — and important — as what happens between the white lines.
Next Saturday and Sunday, the vast majority of Tipperary’s hurling clubs will be in action across the grades, but by Sunday evening a substantial portion of them will be finished for the year. Managements will be blamed, coaches derided and tactics rubbished.
But, one thing is certain – no matter how those games turn out, the manager and his backroom teams will have set out to do their best, to achieve their goals, to follow their plans. Like all good plans though, they seem perfectly workable until they come in contact with the opposition, who will inevitably have their own plans too.
Commercials look a cut above right now.
Holders Clonmel Commercials look to be operating at a different level right now in the FBD county senior football championship. Their victory over Ballina at the weekend was their second big win and they have mastered the art of kicking the two-pointer which is a major factor in the modern game – a game which is becoming more and more attractive to watch.
Loughmore Castleiney got back to winning ways with their victory over Grangemockler, while a more accurate Thurles Sarsfields could have had a second win in their campaign, only for Kilsheelan Kilcash to prevail.
Ardfinnan defeated Aherlow in their game – the Aherlow men now have two losses and are in big danger of going down. JK Brackens defeated Ballyporeen – another side in danger of the dreaded relegation dogfight while Moyle Rovers looked impressive in their win over Upperchurch Drombane.
Looking from the outside in, it would appear that Clonmel Commercials and their neighbours Moyle Rovers are a bit ahead of the chasing pack and should the combinations work out, they could well end up meeting in the county final. But, draws and results don’t always work out as one might think and there is a lot of football to be played yet.
Favourites have a habit of toppling when the pressure comes on and who knows how the remainder of the campaign will unfold. That’s the beauty of it and as was stated earlier there is far more beauty in watching the big ball these days than heretofore. Perhaps though, with the two pointers now dominating, there is a case to be made for a goal being a four-pointer?