Cross Fertilisation

Ross Grainger’s blog (http://rossgrainger.blogspot.com) was one of the things that got me thinking about writing this blog. His is more insightful and covers a wider range of topics. Every week though, he writes a witty report about the FCI match that week, hence the link to me thinking about it. In one of his early entries, he describes his first trip out to FC Irlande, which you can read below;

FC Irlande’s home pitch is just on the outskirts of Brussels, a nightmare to get to with public transport. If Belgium splits I’ll end up living in one country and playing football in another – Flanders. I showed up for my first training session knackered and out of breath, having run fifteen minutes up-hill from the Viaduct bus station.

When I got there I found about 40 lads running furiously and being yelled out by a short bloke with a heavy Irish accent. It was classic training ground berating, “Lift ure knees, cam aaan, put it drew to da end!” I sauntered over and introduced myself.

“Are you the gaffa?”
“Nah I’m the trainer. Are you a new fella?”
“Yeah, I’m a mate of Andy’s. He plays for the thirds.”
“Da turds, eh? All right, join in there yeah. No worries,” he said. He looked at the England shirt I was wearing. “Ya know dis is FC Irlande not FC England don’tcha?” I laughed.
“Yeah, sorry.”
“Ah we’ll letcha in anyway. Ya better be good.”

That was my first meeting with Dave, our trainer. He’s a Gaelic football player from Cork who gets a small fee for running us into the ground on Monday and Wednesday nights. I took a shine to him straight away and went to join in the punishment. This was September.

I still laugh when I read this. First thing to clear up is that the job did not have an accompanying fee, in case someone gets the wrong idea. Second point is that Ross turned out to be one of those missing pieces of the jigsaw that propelled the Firsts to Division 1 of ABSSA for the first time. He scores goals and has a discipline and drive which I was trying to instil in lads. I have a vague recollection of him telling me one night that he spent a week on trial at Middlesbrough. He could have felt my welcome to be unwarm, fortunately he didn’t.

Anyway, introduction out of the way (main reason for it was to reciprocate the honour of having my blog posted as a link on his!), as my two year tenure went on I tried to involve him more in training, taking the warm ups and the like, in the hope I’d pick up a few things off him. He knew his football and is a positive upbeat character to have around.

Now he trains the team and he would always have been my choice when I departed. I’d brought them to a certain point in terms of physical training and discipline but the time was right to drive on with the football side of things.

We still discuss training and the like. I shared a drill with him down in de Valera’s a few weeks ago. I haven’t used it for GAA yet but Ross tried it out at soccer last week. He reported back on how it went, pointing out the pitfalls and improvement points. This is cross fertilisation, as they call it now in relation to taking drills from one sport and applying in another. It’s good to exchange ideas and learn from other games. The area I’d like to improve a lot next year is warm-ups. They become boring and repetitive but are very important because they can set the tone for the session. Ross is strong in this area.

I just finished Billy Morgans book and it’s (cross fertilisation) a practice he has applied since his days in Strawberry Hill in the 70’s or 80’s. GAA wouldn’t be on the course spec of their PE course. Still, Billy said he took a load of stuff from it and incorporated it into his sessions in Nemo and with Cork.

I’m a big believer in it and took a lot of hockey drills, adjusted them and used them for G.A.A. As hard as it may be for some to believe, I learned a lot from a Rugby man called Trevor Collins who I got down to train Kinsale in the winter of 2003. He was very good on running technique, speed work and handling.

My parents threw me into every sport along the way; tennis, hockey, G.A.A., soccer, rugby, cricket and basketball. You can’t soak up enough from the different experiences. I took something from all of them.

I look forward to the trips out to Nossegem in January to get new ideas and discuss different methods with Mr. Grainger. Along the way, I’ll do my best to tap into the ideas of others too. It’s definitely the way forward.