JobBridge football coaches a first for the Banner County

CLARE GAA has become the first county to acquire Gaelic football coaches under the Government’s JobBridge national internship scheme, which provides up to nine months’ work experience for interns.

Con O’Brien (Kilrush), Ger Geary (Kilkee) and Kieran Browne (Clondegad) will be coaching Gaelic football in schools in West Clare from this week until next June.

“JobBridge has allowed us the opportunity to put three people into the divisions of Corca Baiscinn, Cill Cheathair and Estuary Gaels. We have another position available in North Clare for the An Tuaisceart region, which we’re hoping to fill but at the moment we’re looking for the right person to put in there,” Seán Chaplin, Clare GAA games development manager told The Clare Champion.

“They’re in training for the last few weeks. They started two weeks ago and they started out on their own divisions this week. They’ll be there until the schools close next June. They’re three very interested lads, have been involved in their clubs and are aware of what we’re doing at underage. They’ve a great interest in getting involved and the schools will benefit the most because they’ll have regular visits. The lads are good, honest and trustworthy people who’ll deliver a good programme,” Mr Chaplin added.

Currently, Clare GAA employ three games development administrators in John Enright (West Clare), Ronan Keane (Mid-Clare) and Peter Casey (East Clare) while Eoin Murray is the county’s Gaelic football promotion officer.

“Previously, the situation was that we had John Enright in West and North Clare and Eoin Murray in East and Mid-Clare but because a lot of schools in West Clare especially are small two or three-teacher schools, it meant that John had over 50 schools a year to try to get around. Time wise, that limited the amount of time he could spend with them,” Mr Chaplin noted.

Last October, Eamon Keane (Shannon Gaels) chaired a juvenile football club forum from which 23 recommendations emerged.

“As expected, it’s a slow process but there is a good bit of progress on most of the recommendations. Some of them have been completed and some of them can’t be completed until the end of the year. The key one was the coaching and trying to improve on that, which has been acted upon,” Mr Keane commented.

“Pat O’Shea from the Munster Council mentioned that we’re the first county to introduce JobBridge at coaching level. There is a duration of nine months but at least they’ll be trained, experienced coaches after nine months and they’ll drop back into their clubs. If the scheme is still there, you’d be hopeful of hiring three or four more coaches next year but that all depends on Government policy,” Keane added.

One of the forum recommendations was that an audit should be carried out to establish the number of club coaches and their level of expertise. However, less than two-thirds of clubs (21 out of 32) returned the forms.

“Until the county board have a full response to that audit, it’s hard to gauge where we are within each club. If we knew that, we could gauge requirements,” Mr Keane stated.

On the same issue, Mr Chaplin said that knowing how many qualified coaches are active within their own club would be valuable knowledge.

“From next year’s point of view, we’re looking at going out on a regional basis and meeting four or five clubs on the one night. It’s very important we know how many qualified coaches are in each club, how many coaches are Garda-vetted and how many coaches have done the code of conduct. Then we can identify areas in each of the divisions where they need work and we can tailor a programme to suit the division,” he explained, adding that for Clare football to improve, an emphasis must be placed on club coaching.

“If we’re waiting for the four or five individuals that we have at county level to do everything, well then obviously it makes sense that you’ll only see them once every six weeks, at best. That’s not going to develop the game for us. We have to get in on the ground and we have to get in at club level, starting with the nursery programmes at six and going right through to minor. Hopefully then, the clubs will have good U-21 and senior teams to work with,” he said.

Chaplin said one of his priorities is to ensure that young footballers in Clare will be able to play the game for almost 12 months a year.

“It’s not just about development squads. We have to look at the club programme, the post-primary school programme and what we want to do on a divisional and a county basis. What we’re trying to do is engineer a programme where every young person in Clare who wants to play football has a 12-month programme. It mightn’t always be with the clubs or with the development squads but they should always have football. We don’t want to be back where we were three or four years ago, where you had football for three months, six months off and football for a month of two on top of that. If we are going to develop football we need the boys playing 12 months of the year,” he maintained.

“Now, for the first time, Clare has three teams competing at A level in colleges football. By the end of this year, we could have up to 90 boys who will have experienced playing in A competition,” Mr Chaplin pointed out.

West Clare-based games development administrator John Enright says West Clare Colleges and North Clare Colleges participation in Munster competitions has been supported by the schools involved.

“It has gone reasonably well. The schools back it, which is the most important thing. The reason we went into the schools and asked them to do it was to make the club player better. The player interest is there. The big thing is those competitions are held in winter. It gives them an extra two months of football when they’re normally not playing anything. The concept of coming into development of school squads is no longer alien to them or their parents. From where we were, it’s a big step forward,” he believes.

This is the fourth year of divisional squads, which are separate from county development squads. Players who are U-4 next year will have completed four years of divisional squad training.

“We started with the four divisions in West Clare when they were 10-year-olds. They’re 13-year-olds now. Next year’s U-15 Munster colleges team will be the first group of players,” John Enright confirmed.
The former Kilkee and Clare senior footballer believes a separate Munster Council backed-project is also paying some dividends.

“Munster Council and the county board backed a first-year coaching project three years ago and the first group of players to come through that was the county U-16 squad that won this year’s Munster Shield. They beat Cork in the final and the U-15s beat Kerry North and then lost to Cork by a goal in the last couple of minutes. They were the second group of players under that scheme. The West Clare colleges U-15s got to the Munster A final last year. What it shows is that if we get a pocket of players through and they are put into those competitive situations, they can come on in leaps and bounds,” he suggested.