Euan Murray of Tipperary in action against Mikey Rohan of Kilkenny during the 2024 Electric Ireland GAA Hurling All-Ireland Minor Championship final match between Kilkenny and Tipperary at UPMC Nowlan Park in Kilkenny. Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile.
By John Harrington
An impressive list of speakers has been assembled for the 2024 Gaelic games Coaching Conference which will take place in Croke Park on Saturday, November 23.
One of them is Dr. Phil Kearney, an Associate Professor in Motor Skill Acquisition, Coaching, and Performance at the University of Limerick.
Dr. Kearney is also a member of the Gaelic games Sports Science Working Group where he’s the lead for the Skill Acquisition and Biomechanics sub-group.
He has worked with other experts in the field such as Dr Ed Coughlan (MTU), Dr. Wesley O’Brien (UCC), Dr Carla McCabe (UU), and Dr Paul Kinnerk, as well as coaches Molly Dunne and Donie Buckley, to produce the Skill Acquisition Guide for Practice in Gaelic games which will be launched at the upcoming Coaching Conference.
The guide will outline what the sports science discipline of Skill Acquisition is, how it can help you as a coach, player, or club, and how it can be integrated with other areas of sports science as well.
Ahead of the upcoming Coaching Conference, GAA.ie spoke with Dr. Phil Kearney about Skill Acquisition and why it plays an important role in the holistic development of young Gaelic games players.
GAA.ie: Phil, can you explain what Skill Acquisition is for those who might not be familiar with this discipline of sports science?
Phil Kearney: It's the science of practice. In the same way that nutrition is a body of science that tells you how to fuel the body, Skill Acquisition is the body of sports science that informs how to practice: how people learn, how coaches can offer good instruction, how players can engage in the most effective practice to get the most out of every hour of practice.
Dr Phil Kearney addresses attendees during a Gaelic Games Coach Developer Community Event at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Sam Barnes/Sportsfile.
GAA.ie: The upcoming Gaelic games Coaching Conference in Croke Park focuses on young players in the F2 Go Games (7-12 year olds) and F3 Youth (13+ year olds) of the Player pathway. Presumably Skill Acquisition is a big part of the holistic development of players in those age groups?
PK: Absolutely. Coaches who are working with those age grades have a lot of questions about how to best to help the players they're working with. There might be some players who are struggling a little bit within the group to pick up certain skills. There might be other players who are absolutely flying and need to be challenged a little bit more.
Skill Acquisition can offer guidance for coaches as to how to get the right challenge for everybody in the group. We talk about a Goldilocks effect. How do you make your sessions just right for everybody so they all get the right level of challenge to develop?
When we talk about player development we're not just talking about developing performance and eventually high performance. One of the things that we know from research on retention and drop out in sports is that helping players to feel like they're improving or that they are good at something is really important to keeping them in the sport.
Coaches having the ability to support all players to develop their skill is one of the ways we can help keep them in sport. Skill Acquisition offers that guide to help coaches offer something for all athletes to keep them enjoying their sport and motivated to continue in their sport. It's as much about participation as it is about performance. If you feel like you're good at something, if you feel like you're improving at something, you're more motivated to stay at it. Skill Acquisition can help participation and retention as much as performance development.
GAA.ie: Can it be challenging for a coach to cater for players of varying abilities in a group setting?
PK: I think that's the most challenging thing for coaches, especially in that age-group of late childhood/early adolescence where you can see such big variation in terms of skill level, motivation, and maturation. There's a huge challenge for coaches in terms of how to offer something which works for every skill level, every interest level. One of the long term lessons that we know from the research in Skill Acquisition is that the people who are really good at eight, nine, ten years of age might not be the people who are really good by the age of 15 or 16, never mind 25 or 26.
So it's really important that we are offering a positive and motivating experience for every young child, every adolescent, to keep as many of them in the game for as long as possible. That's a hard thing to do. I would say it's possibly one of the hardest things for coaches to manage, in the same way that it's one of the hardest challenges for teachers to manage within the classroom. Skill Acquisition offers suggestions in terms of how to manage that challenge and help all children to have a positive experience in sport.
David Clifford of Kerry in action against John Daly of Galway during the 2022 GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Final match between Kerry and Galway at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Daire Brennan/Sportsfile
GAA.ie: Is it often the case that the children who mature that bit earlier and are dominant at a young age because they're physically stronger than their peers don't fully develop their skill potential and then are left behind when their peers catch up with them physically?
PK: It is. It can be a challenge to motivate children to work on certain aspects of their game because they don't need to; they can perform really well without developing those aspects. We know that when other kids catch up and have their growth spurts a little bit later that's when the skill, the decision making, the ability to read the play, all of those things become much more important. Understanding how you can engage children in different ways in order to develop their skill set holistically and their playing ability holistically is really important. You want to give every player an appropriate challenge all the way through their development.
GAA.ie: What can we expect from your presentation at the upcoming Gaelic games Coaching Conference?
PK: The session is going to focus on a framework for Skill Acquisition within Gaelic games. Unlike some of the other sports sciences such as Performance Analysis or Athletic Development, Skill Acquisition is less well known. What we've put together is a Guide for Practice. What Skill Acquisition is, how it can help you as a coach, how it can help you as a player, how it can help you as a club, how it works and integrates with other areas of sports science as well.
We hope it's a pretty comprehensive introduction to the sports science discipline which will help coaches understand how this can be a useful support and resource for them. How this body of knowledge can help them answer some of the questions they have about how to structure practice sessions, how to deliver instruction and feedback most effectively to players, how to plan long-term development programmes in terms of skill. There's some fantastic resources available and this guide is our first step towards making those resources, that knowledge, more accessible to coaches.
The guide should be coaches’ first stop when you have questions about Skill Acquisition. It will be split into a series of sections which will signpost you to the information you need for whatever stage of knowledge you have about Skill Acquisition to help support your coaching.
Aoife Lane, centre, with, from left, Phil Kearney, Kate Kirby, Des Ryan, Eamon O'Reilly, Denise Watson, Niall Moyna and Siobhan O'Connor during the Gaelic Games Sports Science Launch at Croke Park in Dublin.
GAA.ie: Would you hope the Guide will demystify the science of Skill Acquisition and show how it can be incorporated into all aspects of coaching?
PK: Not just demystify, but help coaches to see that they're doing a lot of things already which are aligned with the Skill Acquisition research, and have opportunities to do more. That is a central part of the framework. This is not a sports science discipline that's delivered by a specialist who comes in like you would have with Nutrition or Sports Psychology or Performance Analysis. Skill Acquisition is slightly different in that the intention is that most of the time the coach is the person who draws upon the knowledge of Skill Acquisition because they're the ones designing the practice sessions. They're the ones giving feedback to players.
Yes, they can be supported by scientists and coach developers at points, but it is the coach who is the person who is primarily responsible for drawing on this knowledge. There is already some excellent practice happening at all ages within Gaelic games. We have coaches who are doing some fantastic things and, in some cases, they are not familiar with the Skill Acquisition research their practice is consistent with. In other cases, there may aspects where coaches have questions about what they should be doing or if what they are doing is the right thing. Skill Acquisition research can confirm that they're on the right path and give them more confidence in terms of what they're doing.
For other coaches there might be ideas from the research which gives them a new perspective on aspects of their practice. We're hoping that at whatever stage of development a coach is at, that they will all find something within this Skill Acquisition Guide for Gaelic games which will help them develop their coaching practice.
GAA.ie: And perhaps dispel the notion that skill is something that a player is naturally gifted with rather than something you work for?
PK: Absolutely. There's very little you see on a Gaelic games pitch that hasn't been practiced in some way. Whether it's on a school-yard, a back-pitch somewhere or at home in the garden, many of the skills and performances that we admire so much, they have their origins in practice, especially informal, playful practice. We want to help coaches to see how they can facilitate the development of creative players who are not just skilful but are really motivated and enjoy playing the game.
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Tickets for the 2024 Gaelic games Coaching Conference on November 23 can be found - here - with prices as follows:
€65 per person (for a group of 5 delegates, club price) or €75 per person (individual). Includes lunch and refreshments and great day out in Croke Park!