Madrid Motoring Well

I've tried my hardest to down all G.A.A. tools for the month of January; blog, organisation, chat and anything related. I just can't do it but by my standards, I've done pretty well. We resume training on January 30th. In preparation for that there is quite a lot of planning required, more of which will follow later in the week.

My biggest mission for the month was a trip to Madrid last weekend. The task was to run a practical course for adults who are training the kids down there. To get the most value for the trip, we also planned Ladies and Men's sessions. This was to be an introduction that we would follow up with a full blown Foundation Course later in the year in Spain.

Most of the participants were from the Madrid Harps club but they were joined by two former/current members who now reside near to Bilbao. Four more came up from Valencia. In all, we had around twenty people (you can see a selection in the photo above). It was interesting to see the number of Spanish people who know little of the game but have been drawn to it through their kids. A big challenge for them is to keep the kids interested and get them games. There are tentative plans in places to use one of their tournaments to bring the kids of Madrid and Valencia together for an exhibition game. Another thing is exposure to the game on television. They say it is very difficult to find somewhere that shows the games in Madrid which makes it harder to sell it to the kids.
Saturday's session focused on two concepts; IDEA and STEP. IDEA stands for Introduce, Demonstrate, Execute, Attend and is a process which a coach can follow when breaking down and teaching the skills. Using skills such as the punt kick and hand pass, we followed this process and then looked at ways to integrate them into progressively more challenging drills. A highlight of the skill work was Rodrigo (third from right, back row) from the Valencia club. The man was like a blocking down machine. I've never see anything like it.

The next focus was the STEP approach. It's something you can use when looking at designing game based drills. It looks at four elements; Situation, Task, Equipment and Players. By tweaking these elements in a game based drill you can achieve different things i..e if you have a 5v5 game and then adjust the # of players to say, 5v3, you will have a very different drill.

We followed this by bringing it all together into a seventy minute training session.

It was a different experience for me because normally I'd be used to training teams rather than coaches. There was more two way communication on Saturday and it was very good. One of the big things I learned at the Tutor course was how much we can learn off of each other. Everyone who attended on Saturday thought like a coach and the comments and interactions were very good.

Once we finished up, we headed back into town to the men's training. Currently, they have no coach so I took the session to allow all their players focus on training. With no fixed abode on a Saturday afternoon, the lads climb a fence to train on a University rugby pitch. As we arrived on Saturday, they were being kicked off. After a quick discussion, training was relocated to a bit of land at the end of the grounds which you could only describe as 'wasteland'. No-one seemed bothered. It's the type of thing that would lead to incessant b1tching and moaning at home but in Europe you don't carry such airs and graces.

The sun began to set as we finished the session shortly before six. There were around 18 lads in all and the team looks in good health. I learned that one of the biggest problems in Spain is getting teams to travel outside their home tournament. Wages are low and distances far so rounding up the troops is a challenge.

That evening I joined a few of the club members for dinner in the city centre. I'd be a massive fan of the Spanish vibe but I'll never get how they can eat so late in the evening. It must have been approaching 23h by the time we got stuck in. Something that is very different about Madrid v's our club here in Belgium, is the number of locals who form its backbone. Javi is the Chairman, or President as they say in Spain. Itizar is the Secretary and it seems there is a healthy mix of Irish and Spanish throughout the club. This was reflected by the attendees on Saturday evening.

A good example of the local connection is Nuria and her husband Jesus (pronounced Hey Zues for those of you with similar Spanish skills to me). Nuria is a teacher who has spent many summers in Dingle where she honed her English and football skills. She learned the football bit well but was unfortunate to pick up a Kerry accent when she switches to English. Jesus also plays and parades around training in a Kerry jersey and plays the game in such a way that you wouldn't think he was from anywhere else. They are also looking after the future of the club, with the next generation to arrive in a few months.

All in all, I think the trip was a success and we will look to build on it in the coming months with a follow-up Foundation Course.

Ugandan Shilling Lures Cotter

The door stopped revolving a while ago. Now it seems it is just one way traffic, the wrong way. Darragh Cotter becomes the latest departee when he starts his trek to Uganda on Saturday morning. His leaving is sudden in the sense that he only heard about his new job last Saturday, accepted Sunday and leaves tomorrow.

Last night he had exceptionally well attended going away drinks in The Hairy. Some crowd for a Thursday night. It is an especially big loss as he lays claim to two invaluable characteristics; he's from Cork and he is a dual player - although some may merge those into one, since it seems to be almost given that one comes with the other. Darragh being Darragh, he didn't go quietly. Instead he was the first Belgium G.A.A. man to deliver a 'speech' upon his departure. Embarrassing.

The timing is particularly bad because it is January and lads feel the blow from departures all the more. Just back after Christmas, morale can be low and to lose another buddy worsens the whole situation. Shane was on to me the other night clearly disappointing by the whole thing. He got little sympathy from me though. I used get down about it but you become very cold about comings and goings when you've been here as long as I am and seen so many departures. Its Brussels life, you just plough on.

Back to Darragh though. It wasn't all hunky dory (http://s2.jrnl.ie/media/2011/09/hunky-dorys-390x285.jpg) during his second tenure in Brussels. The man was the ultimate 'drill wrecker'. At the beginning of the year, I watched with great amusement as Eoin became more and more frustrated. They nearly came to blows one night when Darragh repeatedly hopped the ball in a drill when he wasn't supposed to!!

Then Eoin left and he became more a problem for me! My lack of patience isn't much of a secret at this stage and his airy fairyness nearly drove me around the bend. I can't put my finger on why he couldn't just do sh1t properly! The man was one of the most committed lads to training but he was like that child in school who didn't have any badness in him but just couldn't stop flipping talking! It was especially prevalent in group drills but not so much in one on ones. I got caught in a tackle box with him one day and can speak first hand at what a nightmare that could be.

Warm-ups were the other thing. He was brutal at them, always lagging behind, doing something slightly different to everyone else. I'd want to kill him when I'd see him fluffing around. As a countermeasure I thought we could get him to take some warm-ups from now on. He took one towards the end of last year before an in-house game. It went like clockwork which nearly made me more frustrated!

In a perverse way, when someone leaves it delivers a very positive message to the rest. Like those that went before, Darragh was slightly emotional about leaving and the club was one of the central players fuelling that. His few words last night confirmed that.

His Uganda gig is eight months. That brings him up to the start of our Championship. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in a Belgian jersey later in 2012.