Separating strong and weaker kids at games

They should just be playing with their friends at that age.

Just need to ensure the weak lads hang around for as long as possible to pay the membership and contribute to all the fundraisers.. Those trophies don't come cheap these days

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Am guessing that anyone who says streaming shouldn't happen isn't actually involved in coaching themselves.

Am with my own club's U9 group. We have 35 to 40 regulars, and they're split in three streams of 12 to 14 each. We do 60 to 70% hurling, and the rest football.

In hurling, the A stream lads are capable of picking up the ball on the run, soloing, and sticking it over the bar from 25 yards out or further. They've no fear of getting stuck into one another when competing for the ball either. Most if not all have been coming to the club since joining the Nursery at three or four years of age, so they've already got four or five years of good coaching behind them. Some are sons of current or recent senior hurlers, so they've been getting good practice at home since they could walk too!

At the other end, we have a group including lads who joined just this year or late last year, and others from non-traditional GAA backgrounds (i.e. we have boys from Polish, Hungarian, Italian, and French families). All still need work on their ground stroke, particularly off their "weaker" side (although we don't say "weaker" in training - we just say "other side" or left side/right side). All need several attempts to pick up a ball (either roll lift or jab lift). Striking from the hand is beyond them at this stage, and one or two need reminding at every training session on how to even hold a hurl. Most if not all are nervous of tackles, and have a fear of maybe being struck by a hurl if they get in close to somebody else.

You simply can't mix them together all the time. The C stream needs to do different drills because they're at a different stage of their hurling development. The A stream would be bored by those drills, and need something more challenging. And in mini games at the end of training, the A stream lads would run rings around the others, and the C stream would hardly get a tap at the ball.

Nobody is stigmatised as being "just a B" or "only a C" for the whole year. Lads are moved up a grade when they're ready for it. Nobody is ever moved down, because that would be too demoralising.

Finally, it's not the case that the "best" coaches are with A, and the "worst" with C. We rotate regularly between them, so that every coach spends time with every player. And one of the best things in coaching is when you help to develop a lad enough for him to be promoted to a higher grade. We've a Chinese boy who held a hurl for the first time and started right from scratch in the pitch three years ago, but he's so interested and enthusiastic that he's now one of our top three or four players.

Hopefully this is enough to show that streaming works well when done well. But obviously, I can only speak for my own club. If some other club uses it as an excuse to fob "the bad lads" off to the far end of the field, with any oul' eejit to look after them, then obviously that's not what it's about, and it wouldn't work so well there.

I'm of the opposite opinion.

I have 30 kids of all different abilities and we do have them separated in to two squads. The format for the split was simple - kept the friends together and those who were in the same school.

So you have all abilities on both squads. Plenty of blitzs and game time for everyone. Thankfully the stronger players accept that some are not as good as them and don't go around bitching and moaning when they make mistakes etc.

What has fostered is a really great group of young 10 year old lads who work together and enjoy their training sessions / matches. I know that in a couple of years a few of these lads will disappear out of the group but the stronger more interested ones will stay on and form the basis of a strong team with a really strong bond.

The stronger lads don't get stronger by the hour or two a week at training - they develop their skills practicing what they learned day in day out in the back garden or in the field with their mates after school.

U10 football isn't about winning, isn't about being the best - it's about learning to be part of a team, be physically active and developing the life time love of a sport.

It definitely is not up to the coaches as in an hour a week you can only do so much. From my experience the ones who improve the most are the ones who practice at home. We have a few with us who after 2/3 years you would think never seen a ball before as they cannot even get the basics right while others are flying.

Overlooked this one earlier. You're right, wrong, and somewhere in between, all in the space of a few sentences.

"Streaming for ability at that age is a bad idea because those already behind will fall further and further behind" - wrong, and I've already demonstrated how streaming will help bring players on if it's done well.

"By the time the sport becomes competitive you'll have lost all these players probably for good" - in between, and will come back to this one.

"Sport shouldn't competitive at u8 or u10 level. It should be about developing skills, but primarily fun and play." - 100% right, and by streaming, you can make sure everybody gets the appropriate level of coaching on the most important skills for the level they're currently at, and have fun while they're doing it. That's far better than some becoming disillusioned because things are too hard, and others growing bored because they're too easy. There's no "one size fits all" for a group of 30 to 40 kids in any activity or setting.

Also, I'm guessing you might be unaware that it's actually a rule of the GAA that it doesn't become competitive until U12 at the earliest? All the way up to U11, it's "Go Games", where everybody gets to play and there are no trophies or titles at stake. Maybe have a read of https://www.gaa.ie/my-gaa/getting-involved/go-games

And now back to the middle one - yes, an unfortunate truth is that some kids will drop away between the ages of about 8 and about 12 or 13. Also that they'll probably mostly be the ones from a Stream C, because they're generally the ones who are not interested in it enough anyway to practice at home in between training sessions. But coaches can't force kids to develop an interest or practice at home. And it's the same in all sorts of other activities too. Any music or Irish dancing teacher will tell you they've got far more 8-year-olds than 12-year-olds. My local rugby and soccer clubs have got far more 8-year-olds than 12-year-olds too.

I've a nephew who's 14. When he was 8, he did GAA, soccer, swimming, gymnastics, and music lessons. Now he just does soccer and swimming. It's not because his GAA club (a different one to mine, by the way), his gymnastics club or his music teacher did anything wrong - he just hadn't the interest to keep them going when he got older.

Devils advocate - in your group, what % of mentor kids are in strongest, in middle and weakest groups

A fair question, and one I was going to address in my earlier post, except I thought it was long enough already!

We have six coaches. Three of them are Dads with sons involved, and three have no direct connection with any of the boys.

Of the Dads and lads - one of them is exceptional and I fully expect him to play senior inter-county one day. He's absolutely obsessed with hurling, and plays every spare minute he has.

My own lad was Stream B last year but moved up to A this year, partly due to being in a different crop this year and now being "up to the age", but also largely due to plenty of practice over the winter.

The other Dad's lad is a C, and to be honest, isn't particularly interested in it at all. The Dad finds it hard to get him to practice at home, and as stated previously, he can't force him to.

Remember we all rotate between the groups. It's not the case that two of us only ever coach Stream A, where our own lads are.

By the way, surely if you have a group of 50, you'd be looking to have more than three groups? I'd be thinking at least five, even if they were A, three B's, and a C. If you're a big enough club to have 50 kids coming at that age, you should be big enough to have enough adults coaching too, to allow that to happen.

Very interesting discussion and something I'm starting out in with my kids. We've about 40 U9's. They split them into U8's and U9's for training and matches and don't stream other than that. Teams are evenly picked etc. for matches.

Himself and a few of the stronger 8's were fairly disappointed when they found out that they wouldn't be training with the older lads. They had been training throughout the winter with them (club decided to do Friday night sessions on astro for anyone interested, so the numbers weren't as great).

There has been some good improvement in a few of the lads in the U8 group who may have been seen as weaker, but I do get the sense that the stronger lads are missing out by not testing themselves against some of the U9's.

I was involved in coaching last year when the were U7 but can't with work commitments this year, and I'd never mention anything unless I was involved, but I do get the sense that they're missing a trick by not mixing the ages up a little. They're all in the same bracket at the end of the day. Even from a social sense, it's better for them to be mixing imo.

Is this the way most clubs do it, i.e keeping it year by year within the 2 year brackets?

I still think its up to the coaches to direct the kids properly. To improve them. And if we do that, we are doing our best.

Excellent discussion.

True. And that includes me in the past.

Saw a really talented lad give up football completely as his dad was a lunatic on the sidelines. No need for it at all