Mission: System Override

With the exception of the Benelux tournament in The Hague, I’ve pretty much been a transformed personality around training and tournaments this year. Gone are the rants and moods. In their place a more jovial character, content with his role as captain and not missing the stresses of management one bit.

Even after Eoin’s departure, I’ve taken the odd session and even if I was on edge when I arrived at the pitch for different reasons, training still provided a great release. The lads have generally kept good concentration levels and we’ve all got on swimmingly.

However, Conan hasn’t been able to offer much support in recent weeks and with Eoin gone, the training responsibilities are meandering more and more into my path. This is certainly not the scenario I want but it’s a case of needs must. One of the sometimes unfortunate aspects of my personalities is that I’m pretty much all or nothing. So after taking a string of sessions in a row, I take a more personal interest in what we will actually do.

The 7’s in Maastricht gave me a lot of hope. On paper, we were maybe the 4th strongest team. However, tactically we got it spot on and each guy bought into that sum of the parts mentality; by and large. The result, as you know, is we came within one score of a draw and two of a win.

In my previous reign as trainer I had all but given up on tactics. There are many reasons. The main two are that you simply don’t get the same guys at training often enough to get the messages across and the other is that not enough guys probably really want to invest the thinking time in understanding and learning the tactics.

The Maastricht experience combined with a discussion with Dad last night on the topic, convinced me to try again. The project started at training today and showed many promising signs. Both teams were given different instructions and we played in five minute bursts. Each team was asked to rigidly stick to those instructions. The first five minutes was pretty good. You could clearly see the plus and minus’ of the different set of tactics. This was the objective of the exercise.

In the second set of five minutes, both teams were given different sets of instructions. This is when it fell apart. The team opposing my team decided to change their direction when they started to lose. In a normal situation, this is commendable behaviour. After all, doing the same thing will only get the same results.

However, the purpose of the exercise was to clearly see the pros and cons of different tactics. There would be a third five minutes to give more scope for changing. We never got this far though.

Mid-play I pointed out that the other team should return to the original instructions. After it was ignored a second time, I called a halt to proceedings. What followed was one of my more slightly over the top rants, impressive enough to draw a reasonable sized crowd of onlookers. With that, the session came to a close.

There is a train of thought, which I buy into, that you should always finish the session on a positive note. However, there is also a train of thought which says, always finish training with the players wanting more. I backed the second one today.

Ger took the warm down and there was ridiculous tension in the already thundery Brussels air. Having calmed, and recognising I was the cause of this tension, I decided it needed defusing. Normally I would rarely reference any personal experiences when talking to a team but one story illustrates the pain of trying to achieve what we were trying to achieve at the session i.e. impose a style of play on a team.

I’m sure I have told the story in a previous entry so forgive me if you are familiar with it. My dirty secret is I used to play field hockey. For one season we had a coach called George Treacy. He was a former international player and manager with Ireland and the first coach I ever had, bar isolated sessions with the likes of Eamonn Ryan, who improved my technique (there was plenty of scope!) and brought truly tactical insights to our game.

Getting up to speed on his system was a painful exercise. In one of the first games against Cork Harlequins, he hauled myself and Lenny off early in the game. As the the two central midfielders and were not used to sitting in the dugout. We were later reinstalled but the message was clear; stop doing your own thing and buy into my way.

Actually, this is something that is in my make-up. I wasn’t blessed with blinding pace or an exceptional skill set. I trade on determination and an ability to read the game and distribute the ball reasonably quickly and accurately. I also do what I’m told (although many many people my disagree) and have always been happy to play whatever role necessary in the team.

I started to develop this mindset when I was eleven and playing Basketball for St Pius X in Indianapolis, Indiana. In Basketball, the game plan, to put it simply, is made up of a series of predefined plays. Everyone knows where and when to move and where they ultimately want to get the ball too. Your role is clearly defined.

Anyway, back to George and his tactics. He persisted to make myself, Lenny and the others understand. We spent many a cold night on the training pitch in the Mardyke being drilled. It bore fruit. A few months into his reign we played at home to CofI. To put this in context, the Munster Senior League is like the Scottish Premiership. CofI and Harlequins are miles ahead. Back then, they were littered with current and former Senior internationals as well as a host of others who played at U-21 and U-18 level. In fact, I doubt they had anyone in their panel who hadn’t worn a green shirt at some level at the time.

We had Lenny, a former U-18 international, Eoinzy who had played for Leinster U-18 and myself who made a few appearances for the Irish Universities. I should qualify my representative career by mentioning that I wouldn’t have been everyone’s cup of tea. There was a Nordie called Grimes in the management team and he wouldn’t have appreciated the qualities a ‘converted hurler’ brings to a hockey pitch.

Sorry, I’m reminiscing now. Anyway, that gives you the context of the difference in quality of the two teams. Considering we had lost 12-0 to the same opposition in a cup game a few weeks previous, to trail only 2-0 at half-time could have been considered a decent improvement. At the interval, George insisted to stay with our system. We did and got one back quickly.

I’ll never forget the passage of play that led to the second. We progressed up field with the ball and looked to find a gap on the right. Nothing on so we dropped the ball into midfield and looked left. Nothing on their either so back and forth we went. This period of ‘sustained’ pressure was an achievement in itself as you rarely enjoy much of it against CofI or Quins. Our patience paid off when we found Lenny in a gap and he equalised. 2-2.

With time nearly up, Eddie Coogan, a guy who was a third team player at CofI before moving to UCC, even had the cheek to search for a winning goal but a magnificent save denied us a spectacular winner.

Again some context. I’m open to correction, but that is the only time in at least the last fifteen years that either CofI or Quins dropped points to any other team in the league (besides each other).

As I said, to get to that place was painful. Players play to instincts or habits and overriding those in-build systems is a massive challenge. It’s not just one player you have to do it with either, its 11, 13, 15 or however many you have on your team. Today, we made a start. The pain we went through was part of the process. If we/I can convince guys of the value of buying into a system, we will definitely achieve. Despite the couple of misdemeanours, there was enough to suggest guys could see the bigger picture.

Comment; People shouldn’t think that tactics are regimental and box everyone off. Every team needs an x-factor. However, consider Barcelona. Messi is their x-factor but they clearly play as a team and Messi is an integral part of their system. The point is, don’t think a system can’t allow for an x-factor but don’t think the x-factor can be exclusive of the system.