Skill Development

Consciously, I have largely ignored practicing the basic skills in the last three years training the footballers. Instead, we focused a lot more on fitness. My thinking was simple; we could get to a lot higher level physically, much quicker than we could get there with our skills. I thought by being very fit we could overcome skill deficiencies and get to a competitive level fast. A very skilful team can move the ball with such efficiency that it can actually outplay a fitter team. However, the skill level must be very high and I didn't think we'd bridge the gap quick enough so bypassed it.

There are a number of reasons why I took this approach. The first is the motley crew nature of our players. A lot of guys have not played a whole load of football growing up (or not for some years) and my perception is that its more difficult to learn the skills when you are older. Getting lads fit is a different story though and is much easier. You can derive confidence from being and feeling fit too. Skill work can have the opposite effect if the balls are going everywhere. Intensity in training is important but drills will too often break down if the skill levels are not high enough and thus the intensity will drain out of a session. Some practical issues influence it also, like not having enough balls, nets behind goals etc. That seems incidental but to practice blocking, shooting etc etc it makes it trickier.

Hockey is a very technical game and one where fitness will only take you so far (and nowhere near as far as it will get you in Gaelic Football). I remember Eddie Kirwan (our former coach in UCC) used say he found putting lads through physical drills to be boring for him and he much preferred working with lads when they had a stick in hand. Obviously Eamonn Ryan is all about skills and his visit a couple of weeks ago has definitely influenced my thinking.

Some simple drills he did left us all fairly bait and really showed how you can get intensive bursts of activity, that totally focus on specific skills, into training. Kirwan probably also preferred skill based training because he could see some clear improvements in his players. After Eamonn's session I can definitely see an improvement in my kicking, particularly point shooting (although I still reserve this for training and not matches!!). In a different way, I've found that not blowing the ball wide or over a lad's head provides a similar level of satisfaction to bursting your nuts at a physical session.

Last night, we got a good bit of this type of stuff in and with reasonable intensity too. The huffing and puffing may be more of a reflection on the lessened physical approach in the last six weeks though. Still, it probably has to be the way forward as guys can only take so much hard slog and retain their motivation. In the end, they are there to play football and throwing the odd ball into physical work will only cod them so long.