The importance of understanding the person inside the jersey

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 Chartered Psychologist Dr Ciarán Kearney, who has specialised in sport psychology with players, coaches, and teams at county, college, and club level in Gaelic games and in other high performance environments both nationally and internationally, most recently with Team Ireland for Paris 2024.

He is Senior Lecturer at St. Mary's University College Belfast where he teaches in both Human Development and Sport Science, and he's also a member of the Sports Psychology sub-committee of the Gaelic games Sports Science Working Group.

Ahead of the Gaelic games Coaching Conference where he will speak on the topic of 'Psychology Informed Coaching', we talked to Dr. Kearney about how the application of sport psychology in Gaelic games has evolved over the years and why a collaborative approach is required to foster a positive team environment.

***

GAA.ie: Ciarán, can you tell us a bit about your background in Gaelic games, your professional career, and some of the milestones along the way?

Ciarán Kearney: Like a lot of people who'll be at the conference, I have an expertise and professional training. I've been training in Psychology over the last 33 years and in that time my understanding and learning of psychology has evolved. Again, like many at the conference, I was baptized in Gaelic games so that was in my bloodstream long before I came across psychology. I'm a person who loves sport and passionate about Gaelic games in particular who happens to be trained professionally in psychology. As opposed to a psychologist who's trying to find a role for himself in Gaelic Games.

My family roots in Cumann Luthchleas Gael run deep. I had uncles who were part of great Antrim hurling and gaelic football teams of the 1940s and 50s. And Scór was strong in our house. My father won an All-Ireland title in 1973, a year after Bloody Sunday, reciting Thomas Kinsella’s poem ‘the Butchers Dozen’. He was back in the Scór final in the centenary celebrations of 1984. Like him, I also won medals in Scór. Part of my own journey was playing hurling and gaelic football through club, college, county.

Not an illustrious career by any means, I never envisioned myself being in the Hall of Fame, but I was proud to win provincial and All-Ireland honours up through underage, and some county success with my club. Then going into coaching roles myself across Gaelic Games, helping establish a development pathway for Antrim ladies football. I have a background in Athletics as well. I've coached underage provincial winners in cross country and middle-distance running. Those would be things people wouldn't know about me. But the evolution of my own involvement in sport came when I found the intersection between my professional training in psychology and my love of sport. That's when I really began to then see an opportunity to contribute specialism into Gaelic games.

In recent times, with the Gaelic games Sports Science Framework chaired by Aoife Lane and involving all of the sports sciences, I joined Kate Kirby and others on the advisory sub-committee on Sports Psychology. We began to develop curriculum and a framework which could help to inform all of those involved in Gaelic Games - Athletes, teams, coaches, mentors.

I'm a full-time senior lecturer in St Mary's University and I'm a chartered psychologist specialising in sport and high performance. In recent times in terms of other milestones I've been very fortunate to be asked to work with many different coaches and teams. Brian McIver, Paddy Tally, Malachy O'Rourke, Gregory O'Kane, Declan Bonner, among others, and I’ve worked at both club and the county level. In the last year I've also been fortunate to be involved with Team Ireland in their preparation and performances at Paris 2024.

That gives you a snapshot, I think.

GAA.ie: During your career is it fair to say there has been a mindset change about the positive utilisation of Sports Psychology in Gaelic games. Now it's a given whereas that certainly wasn't always the case.

CK: I think, like Irish society, the understanding and openness to psychology has evolved. Our social attitudes are reflected in sport sometimes. In the past people like Niamh Fitzpatrick, Aidan Moran and John Kremer, a great friend and mentor of mine, pioneered psychology in sport and they worked with teams, but there was a misunderstanding about what they might offer. That probably reflected old misconceptions in society about what psychology is.

We have only just begun to get a structure and foundation through the Gaelic Games Sports Science Framework and locate sports psychology alongside the other sports sciences as a part of a toolkit for coaches and athletes.

As well as the change in social attitudes, I think there has been an increase in interest more broadly in Irish society, and especially in Gaelic Games. Look to the statistics from the Gaelic Players Association where there's an increased interest and desire to access specialist services in terms of counselling and mental health. Or look to research done by people in different universities across Ireland. When Michael Murphy, who’s returning to play for Donegal, he was doing a Master’s course on which I was teaching in Sport Psychology. Michael’s thesis showed a huge surge in interest among Gaelic Games players at both club and county level in accessing sports psychology services. Those findings were reinforced in recent research done by Trish Jackman and others during the term of our advisory sub-committee on Sport Psychology.

The challenge for us now is to close the gap between the desire and the interest among players in sport psychology and the provision of services which are quality assured and done by people who are licensed to practice. That's the gap but I'm very confident that gap is getting smaller and conferences like the event in Croke Park provide an opportunity to begin to also bridge that gap between the desire or interest and the knowledge and expertise.

GAA.ie: The term 'Performance Coach' has been used quite loosely in the past and some managers have brought people into such roles with none of the formal psychology qualifications that you talk about. Is it important from your point of view that there's an awareness of what qualifications or not people who work in this field have?

CK: Teachers aren't allowed to teach until they're qualified as teachers. Doctors and solicitors aren't allowed to practice until they are qualified. They can do so under supervision in their training, but it's always along a professional pathway and psychologists are no different. Likewise with physiotherapists in the environment of sport people will train and learn under supervision, but eventually qualify and become licensed to practice.

Psychologists should be seen in the same way and that provides some assurance to those who are seeking the support, the athletes and the coaches, that there's a quality and a qualification behind the provision of those specialist services. That is not to say that the expertise offered by psychologists diminishes or displaces coaches in their role. I'm very firmly of the view that really good coaches…I've mentioned a few with whom I've been very fortunate to work. Really good coaches develop good psychological skills. I believe psychology should be a part of coaching that's not apart from it.

My job is to understand the context and the environment, to help to shape and foster that, but to work in harmony with the people who are at the centre of that. That can include the coaches and managers as well as the players and other parts of the support system. The more that’s understood I hope the more that suspicion about psychology begins to subside because it's not about taking over roles.

For people who do ‘Performance Coaching’ outside Ireland, it's actually more like athletic conditioning. The discipline and training of a Performance Coach in every other country is seen as anchored within strength and conditioning, or athletic conditioning, with additional expertise in sports science. Nothing to do with psychology.

People are starting to learn the difference and I think we can do that in an inclusive and supportive way. When people have begun to get a taste for psychology along their own journey in Gaelic Games and might like to develop that further we should provide the professional pathways and the support structures and likewise for coaches. That doesn't that doesn't mean that they all have to become qualified psychologists in order to understand what we want to talk about at the conference, which is how an environment can be psychologically informed.

GAA.ie: So, it's all about a collaborative approach? You're all literally trying to work together as a team?

CK: Precisely. It's a unity of purpose that we're seeking to forge. The environments that we have in Gaelic games aren't bricks and mortar. I know facilities are important. I'm sitting 100 yards here from Casement Park and I have a 15-year-old son coming back from a hurling game who's never seen inside our own stadium. So, I know very well that facilities are important. And I think in Gaelic games we do a great job to provide those facilities for different age groups and different teams.

But the environment that psychologists talk about is actually about people and place. It's about creating and fostering an environment which is made up of the interactions and all of the behaviours, beliefs, values, and ethos that will cultivate it. You can only do that in harmony with coaches and athletes or players. It's not just the people who are specialists. It could be the kit-person, the people in the back room. I prefer to think that psychologists should be not just in a back room, but in the background of that environment. Part and parcel of it is being in harmony with people and helping to link them together and create places where the people feel like they belong. That's a basic, fundamental psychological need for every single one of us in any walk of life from a family unit through to a club and community. That we have a place where we can belong. The best teams do that consistently well and that's where I think good psychological skills and a psychologically informed approach can help equip and empower our athletes and our coaches to build, foster, maintain and improve on those environments that are essentially made up of people and place.

GAA.ie: I presume that it's not a one-size-fits all approach when you work with teams and that you have to connect into their own unique sense of place to get that communal buy-in you're talking about?

CK: Absolutely. I'm an Antrim man. I played for Creggan. I live in Belfast. But, I’ve helped county teams in Monaghan, Down, Donegal and Derry. I have been in the heart of Trillick, Kilcoo, Dunloy and many other places which have their own sense of identity, history, and community. To begin with, you need to understand people and place. So, we learn together and what works in one place is not necessarily going to work somewhere else be that with an individual or a team. In a way you have to be open minded and also sensitive to the context. I am a visitor when I work with a team and hopefully become a friend, a sort of a companion on the journey. I would like to think that good coaches find that, as psychologists, that you go part of the journey with people.

I don't mean that in some abstract sense. I mean building relationships with people that endure beyond the season. You can't begin to understand what's going on for a player until you understand what's going on for a person. And I think that's where someone in my own role has special expertise to help a coach and help teammates with one another.

We talk a lot about being player centred, but we also ought to begin a step before that by being person-centred and understand the person inside the jersey. If we can do that, then actually we could help people to grow themselves as people, as well as growing and improving as players. That's one of the fundamental assets of Gaelic Games. That embeddedness within communities, that ability to connect with who people are, and then to develop and provide a stage for us to perform our national games in a way that provides the spectacle and the excitement and the opportunities that we want to offer to our young people.

Done well, we create an environment which is psychologically informed which means it's also healthy. It's one in which people feel better. They grow as individuals as well as develop as players.

GAA.ie: So, to foster that psychology informed environment you need to be open-hearted as well as open-minded?

CK: You can't be involved with teams, with athletes, or as coaches, without beginning to develop some sort of relationship or rapport, which grows into a deep respect and a sense of mutual engagement or connection. That's a great strength of what we do in Gaelic Games, that we connect people together. To do that means also the lived experience of people is part of what we open ourselves to. I have felt the disappointment in those changing rooms as well as the euphoria and the enjoyment that comes with when you finally accomplish something like we did in St Mary's for only the second time in the history of the College when we won the Sigerson in 2017.

In sport, we can provide a secure environment within which people can forge strong connections. In Belfast now you see Gaelic games growing across the city in places where people thought it never possible and some people would never want it to happen. That, to me, is great encouragement.

So, yes, if you open your heart and soul to things you're going to get wounded from time to time but there's also an awful lot of potential to develop yourself as a person as well as a practitioner and to help other people develop themselves. Fulfilling your potential as a person and helping other people to fulfil their own potential is probably about the best thing we can do through Gaelic games and maybe even our lives. To support one another, to strive to be better. It comes through every interaction, every conversation, and those all contribute or diminish the kind of environment that we want to create.

I do think in Gaelic games we're understanding that better than ever. There are some excellent team environments which have been created and it's only when you begin to take it for granted that the environment will endure that sometimes they subside. The more people are equipped and informed the better able we are to create healthy, prosperous environments within which people can learn, train, grow and perform.

***

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!