By John Harrington

2022 was a year of years for Monaghan club Corduff Gaels.

Their men’s senior team won the Intermediate football double of League and Championship as did their senior ladies team, and the icing was put on an already very sweet cake when the men’s Junior B team also did the double.

Treble doubles don’t come along very often, and it says a lot about the ambition within Corduff Gaels that rather than rest on those laurels they instead trained their eyes to the horizon.

There’s no better time to build for the future than when a club is already buzzing with energy, so they set up a development committee headed up by Monaghan footballer and club coaching officer, Laura McEnaney, and tasked them with buttressing the club’s foundations.

Like so many other rural clubs, Corduff Gaels struggle for numbers at underage level. They don’t field teams at every age group, and some older teams have had to amalgamate in the past.

So in the spirit of the Irish proverb ‘ní neart go cur le chéile', there’s no strength without unity, the men’s and women’s clubs decided to pool their resources for the good of their youth.

So now instead of having separate boys and girls nursery training session which required parents with multiple children to be at the pitch for extended periods or different times for pick-ups and drop-offs, they now have one training time on Saturday mornings from 9.15 to 10.30am.

120 boys and girls between the ages of four and 10 now congregate at the pitch every Saturday morning for the Cubs & Academy training programme with over 60 coaches and the buzz and energy is palpable.

“Because we're now going up a level in senior and a lot of underage teams are playing at a high level we just felt like we needed to go back to the base again, to the young age-groups, and just reassess where we were at with them and make sure we had the right structures in place,” explains McEnaney about the rationale behind their nursery restructure.

“So we came up with a development committee comprised of a couple of past players, the chairperson of the ladies club, and a representative from the men's club as well.

“Our club-members Emma and Louise Byrne who have huge experience in both delivering and designing coaching work-shops were involved from the start too.

“We were going off a model they had put in place previously where they coached in Dublin and it's been a huge success.

“Parents are so delighted because they're coming over to training with their boys and girls and what used to happen last year was the girls training was at 10am and then the boys mightn't be until half 11 so the parents were over in the pitch for three or four hours every Saturday.

“Now it’s much more convenient for the parents. We have roughly about 120 kids at the cubs and academy at the minute and 60 coaches willing to give up their time on Saturday morning to help out, which is absolutely fantastic.”

The best GAA clubs are the heart-beat of their local community, and by bringing all their boys and girls together at the same time every Saturday morning, Corduff Gaels are pulsing like never before.

“Yeah, there's such a buzz. The music is on at 9 o'clock when kids start to arrive. We don't start until quarter past nine but we have a free play area where the kids can use any of the equipment.

“The older kids might head towards the balls but the younger kids might be playing with the bubble machines and be throwing the rockets and the age-appropriate stuff for them.

“That little bit of free-time at the start, get them to meet their friends, mingle, have a bit of fun, have a bit of craic, meet the coaches, and then they're ready to go at quarter past nine and we do a collective warm-up with all the cubs and then a collective warm-up with all the academy.

“So they're getting to mingle with all the kids in their group and then they're split into their station after that.”

Having 120 children on the pitch at the same time might seem like a huge logistical undertaking, but thanks to meticulous planning and multiple stations that the children move through seamlessly, Corduff’s nursery is already a well-oiled machine after just a few weeks.

“We came up with this idea back in December and we didn't actually start until the end of March,” says McEnaney.

“We probably had four or five meetings to make sure...it's like anything else in life, you fail to prepare you prepare to fail. We were very adamant that if we were going ahead with this that we wanted it to succeed and for it to be successful.

“So we had numerous meetings in terms of developing resources, getting coaches on board, contacting people in the local area to help us out.

“It didn't happen overnight but everyone knows their role now. The kids come and know exactly what's happening. Week 1 was definitely trial and error with certain things. But to see the flow of the kids around the stations now, they all know exactly what's happening and what they're doing.

“In terms of the organisation, it definitely took us a while to get it up and running but now it just flows from week to week which is just great to see.

“We pair at least two coaches together so they're working at a station and we encourage different people to take different activities each week.

“It's all about learning from each other and you pick up a lot from being with different people and the following week you might be at a different station with somebody else and they might share their ideas with you and vice versa.

“At times we have coaches floating as well so they're getting to see all the different stages in action too. We know there's a lot of really good coaches out there, it's just trying to get the best out of them and we feel at the minute it's going really, really well.

“The way the kids rotate around the station is great for the kids because they're hearing a different voice four times in a session and they're seeing different skills in action and different people delivering them.

“At the beginning of the year Emma and Louise Byrne showed different coaches activities and different ways to adapt it and progress it so you can challenge your more able kids and maybe enable your less able kids by making the drill a little bit harder or easier as the case may be.

“That little bit of professional development at the start to give the coaches ideas has definitely worked well and we also have a shared folder for all the coaches of different games and this has proven great for them because Emma and Louise has resource cards and there's an adaptation and progression of each activity which has been fantastic.”

The nursery is split up by year of birth with each group given a different coloured bib. Mixing boys and girls together has already produced some very positive results.

“Oh absolutely,” says McEnaney. “I find that initially they probably were a little bit reluctant and the boys probably found it difficult that they were training with girls.

“But, to be honest, now it's just the norm. I think it's great for them that they get to experience that. Boys can bring different characteristics and elements to training than girls do, and vice versa, and I think the combination has been really, really good.

“Then, again, it's up to the coach to challenge any of the more able kids within the group if anyone is more dominant.”

Having seen such a positive outcome in a short period of time, McEnaney has no doubts that other clubs could benefit from blending their boys and girls nurseries, particularly clubs with small numbers.

“Absolutely. I don't really see any negative coming from it,” she says.

“The majority of the kids seem to be really enjoying and we check in with them every week. We check in with the coaches and parents regularly too to see if they feel it's working and they do feel it's been a success.

“At the end of the session every week we bring the coaches in for a debrief and we ask them how has that gone, what do you think went well, what do you think we could improve on? At the moment we feel it's going really, really well.

“For the first week since we started, on Saturday the coaches had no feed back because they just felt like they've gotten into the flow of it, they've gotten into the swing of it. I definitely think it's something that a lot of other clubs could benefit from. Especially clubs starting out that maybe don't have many young kids.”

You can view and download some of the coaching resources designed by Emma and Louise Byrne for the Corduff Gaels nursery below.