Euro Star

Europe will send two Ladies Football teams to the All-Ireland Ladies 7’s in Dublin on September 25th. It is a competition which they have participated in for the last number of years with increasing success.

European Ladies Football Officer, Monica Duran, is the driving force behind this year’s organisation. She’s Spanish, living in Barcelona and absolutely off her rocker about Gaelic football. I must have been getting weekly emails from her since last January trying to organise different things. It is incredible to see how the game has gripped her.

I’m not sure did she ask or did I volunteer but I will help out with the training for the upcoming tournament. Last Sunday, we had our first session down in Maastricht and had around 13 players togged out and a few more injured bodies taking refuge in the shade.

Considering they had all played a tournament the previous day and been out drinking half the night, it was a good turnout. Also, the Belgium girls made the journey down for the second day in a row which probably was not so attractive for them.

I brought along David Collins in the hope that his ‘former Inter county player’ pedigree would impress the girls and give the coaching session some credibility. It was going well until he explained his first drill!!

The session went pretty well and the girls tuned in despite bodies and heads that were probably protesting strongly against them. I found it quite invigorating too. In recent weeks, with very little on the horizon in terms of competitive action, it has been hard to stay motivated for training the lads. Sunday was a real pick-me-up, mainly because of the enthusiasm of the girls.

It’s hard to describe the differences between training men and women’s teams. At one level you treat them both the same but on another level you can be harder on lads. For girls, you need to get through to them in a less confrontational manner. In terms of attention span, as long as you don’t let the girls wander off for chats, they are very attentive and they take on board what you say to them or show them. Lads tend to want to stick to their own set ways more.

There’s another session planned after the Munich tournament and that is as much preparation as is realistic given the size of our ‘County’. I think they have a right good chance to have some success this year. They have some good footballers and great competitors so we certainly won’t be travelling home just to make up the numbers.