Putting Conflict Behind Us

I’ve never been averse to the odd coup or rebellion. However, collective strike would never have been one of the tools I’d have used to demonstrate displeasure with a regime. I sat out one year but didn’t seek company of fellow players. Nowadays though, the G.A.A. has become more akin to a Union environment which often leaves its calling card in the form of a strike.

I don’t know the intimate details of the strikes that have plagued G.A.A. teams in Ireland so I won’t get into the intricacies of them. Instead, let’s stay high level and talk about what seem to be the two key divisive characteristics of the disputes; communication and training methods.

G.A.A. tradition would split the group in two; the player and the management. The latter dictates to the former who goes about their business without challenging the direction. The captain comes closest to bridging the gap between the two but in fact he/she probably just represents a mutually respected figure.

In terms of training methods, Ireland has seen great development in this area in the last ten years through home grown and imported expertise. Not everyone has embraced it though. There is an education process which needs to be gone through to understand the science and logic behind new techniques and how to apply them. The opinion still exists that if certain ways were good enough for certain groups at a certain point in time, then why shouldn’t they still be good enough? Let me bang out a few clichés and counter this; if you standstill you get left behind, if you keep doing the same thing you will keep getting the same results.

Your education is an evolution of your thinking but in some cases, maybe ladders, hurdles, cones, power training, agility exercises and other training tools/techniques constitute a revolution. We should be confident enough to embrace new ideas though and not be intimidated by them.

Players have heightened expectations these days. The dynamics of our country changed in the last twenty years. A higher proportion of our population have been exposed to a greater variety of jobs and cultures than ever before. The boom created self-confidence in the value of our opinion and a feeling of self worth. Our skill set has also expanded through these exposures.

Decision making in organisations has evolved to allow more bottom-up (as opposed to top down) decision making in the work environment. An aspect of this is consensus building whereby all the stakeholders input is taken into account. This involves thorough and inclusive dialogue i.e. communication.

Irish people have a certain image of themselves. We think we are the last of the great communicators and to a certain extent this is true. However, think of the main environment which perception says we are at our best; it’s telling a story or singing a song or making new friends. All these are social environments.

A lot of this traditional image is still engrained in us but some has maybe been eroded and replaced by more structured organisation type communication characteristics. When players come to training or tog out for a match they don’t view it so much as a pastime but a cause (this has not changed through generations admittedly). What has maybe changed is that they want to contribute to making the environment a better place to operate in and are keen to bring their ideas to the table i.e. they want some input to decision making.

Following the bottom-up approach, management would be expected to listen and make an assessment on what they hear with some logical thought process. I don’t think players want to run the show (in general!!) but they want to feel that the whole group, players and management, want to move things on. No standing still, letting the opposition catch up and pass them by. If the two groups can leverage their strengths then it will be for the betterment of the entire group.

In unrelated matters, I’d like to wish my brother luck today as his hockey team in Bandon play Bangor in the Irish Junior Cup. I played in the last round with him and would love to be lining up alongside him today.. The second set of best wishes go to Kinsale. Today their Intermediates play Ballingeary in the Tom Creedon Cup semi-final and tomorrow their U-21’s play Championship against Carrigaline. 3/3 would be a good weekend.