TWO weeks ago, when the Football Review Committee released their report on the health of Gaelic football, chairman Eugene McGee lamented the lack of coaching certificates and qualifications held by inter-county managers. "It is one of the great anomalies," he said.
"There is no inter-county manager I am aware of,
and very few club managers, that actually have coaching certificates. Coaching
has been going on 30 or 40 years actively and we have at least as sophisticated
a coaching system in Gaelic football as any game of football around the world.
You could cover the road from here to Longford with people who have earned
coaching certs in the last 30 years and the vast
majority never get the chance to coach a senior club team or at inter-county
level so there is something radically wrong."
McGee's committee want to raise the bar here – no big jobs unless you have the back-up.
"It would be setting a good example if you couldn't be involved with a county team unless you had a coaching qualification," McGee said. "I don't think you can be involved with even the lowest team in English soccer without a coaching badge."
The Longford man may be correct in his assertion that there are few current managers with coaching qualifications, but he needn't worry about the future. With or without a coaching badge system, things will have greatly changed within a few years. The GAA are starting to produce the best young coaches in the land and before long they will be highly qualified, capable and in demand from other sports.
"A lot of young GAA people are now studying full-time in areas of sports science and their courses are very transferable to managing across other sports in the future," says one inter-county player.
http://www.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-football/breaking-the-coaching-mould-3334438.html
