Kilkenny GAA Thread

There's far more being done at squads nowadays than before. Years ago it was 6/7 sessions per year. Now they are meeting almost every week with winter programs as well.

Personally, I think the issue is with the quality of the players coming from the clubs. We have a lot of very interested and enthusiastic people working with under age teams but I fear the quality of coaching, in a lot of clubs, is not great.

the point about the Cul camps again is the people selected to coach at them they are given good money and some not all don’t want to do anything these people are usually given the job because of who they know. Back to the same problem.

we have to start selecting people properly this is the only answer and when they are in the job allotted to them it should be reviewed on an annual or biannual basis.

I had a man up with me last night, several all Ireland medal winner at various codes and he wants to go back to North v South trials at least at minor level, I went further and said trials at all grades North v South, proper competition, sponsored and open to the public to cast there eyes over. The reason for this would be the competition to make the county team would be huge and add bite to the games. Where as at the moment as this former player pointed out the minor selections playing a challenge against say Limerick wouldn’t be as intense because they would already be on the panel.It could be like the Dubs all star’s challenge matches every year. A bit of money to be made on a low cost entry fee at the start of each year with a different sponsor doing each grade, just a thought. Just at minor level it would expose those not at that level and might unearth players who might have improved in a tough match scenario in front of a crowd. Just a thought.

An insightful article from Seamus, but is it a general overview of the squads or just the teams he was involved with really, as it seems to be more from his own teams he was with rather than a general view, I thought Kilkenny won the Tony Forristal 2 years ago and the under 16s won out their tournament too that year!

I’d have Ruth, Mullally, and Ryan as the best options anyway, don’t think Skippy is interested and don’t know if the other two would be either, don’t think Mullally gets the KK job and think Waterford will go for their current coach ahead of Ryan

I think if they keep getting rejected, they’ll go for JJ Doyle because he’s one of the only few who would do it if no-one else was interested (Fortune would definitely be interested but don’t know if the players would be enthused by him)

Joe fortune basically did a come and get me plea on the Wexford hurling pod a few weeks ago

Most of the names I mentioned and I overlooked Scruff, all were huge players in that Golden generation many of them finishing or not quite yet finished in the case of Scruff and TJ, with a hatful of All Irelands, in fact they would probably provide half our "best of team"of that time . I was lucky enough to have known and been friends with the Late Bro Damien. Had many long chats with him about hurling and he was hugely enthused and involved with the Squads that were founded in 2001 by Ned Quinn, Pat Henderson , Brendan O'Sullivan and one or two others. They were a great innovation and success followed at all age ages . Other counties followed our model in time and eventually improved on it. Richie Hogan like DJ and Tommy was spoken of pre teen . Most of the others hugely promising from young, did what was hoped for , and developed to elite inter county level. There is little doubt we need to rejuvenate at all levels not ignoring the fact that huge work continues to be done throughout the county and also that it begins in the home ,schools and clubs. More volunteers everywhere required I hear to carry the load.

I'm not sure if the players are enthused by JJ either, also think the plan is for him to manage the minor team for another 2 or 3 years. In fairness Mullally wouldn't feel like an outside appointment given he's involved so much in Wexford over the years at club and intercounty and Glenmore is less than 40 mins away from both Ferns and Wexford Park. Nowlan Park and Dunmore would actually be further away.

Did all the posters on here contact there relative clubs about he KK management subject? I contacted Dicksboro this morning and then a message came through on clubsapp saying there is a meeting Saturday to discuss KK manager and underage issues to name but two, should be interesting.

The sun were reporting yesterday that shefflin and dowling have both allowed clubs to put their names forward my question is if henry doesn't get the job after making himself available does this mean he will have to step down from u20 likewise with dowling in Kildare. Also in the article it said richie ruth from Tipperary who works with dowling in kierans and kildare would be on brian dowlings proposed backroom team I wonder who henry would have Brian hogan? David herity? Richie oneil? Tommy shefflin?

It seems that there is some inference (with reference to these North South trial games etc) that the best players don't make their way onto the Kilkenny underage squads. They do. The squads coaches are generally fairly ruthless in terms of dropping players who are lacking form and would drop lads in a heartbeat from the team / matchday panel / squad if there was some other lad (showing good form in a club or schools game)who they thought might do better than the current incumbent. Maybe less so when it gets to the minor panel.

Having said that , sometimes you do see the the squads coaches waiting longer for the 6'4 +" guy to come good - as this Brian Cody maxim of " All else being equal, a good big lad is better than a big small lad" is still big here. It seems all squads coaches wants to see the next Gearoid Hegarty coming through.

There is all this very worthy talk spoken about developing players and talking about development but ultimately ALL these coaches just want to win matches for Kilkenny ALL the time, so thats why I think it's productive to keep the net cast wide and have two squads per age group (A and B- with movement between the two and movement in and out of the B) instead of these calls to just have 1. And agree club and schools coaching is key to have players with a good skill level going into that system.

I’ll probably get lashed for this post but it’s been on my mind since I read the Séamus Norris article and I’m really hoping what I’m about to write isn’t taken up the wrong way.

I’ll say again that I genuinely believe we all owe a debt of gratitude to the coaches who generously give their time and energy to our development squads. That said I’ve always been skeptical about how the squads are selected and structured, and whether what they do is achieving what it set out to achieve. It may well be the case that the coaches involved are very competitive and want the best players involved but that doesn’t mean they’re going about achieving that in the right way.

I’ll admit a lot of my skepticism has been based on stories I’ve heard from what I would regard as good sources and from good hurling people who are involved in coaching or other ways with their own clubs… people whose opinions I would trust and respect. I’ve also heard loads of stuff that I would take with a pinch of salt and never repeat.To be fair to Seamus Norris he did say in his article that most of the stuff he had heard or read online or elsewhere about the development squads was untrue and that he would give us the facts.

I understand people’s reluctance to be seen to criticise someone like Séamus whose dedication and commitment deserves enormous respect and appreciation…. and this post is not a criticism of him or anyone else involved with the development squads in any way whatsoever.

Séamus did say though that he wrote the article not to defend the squads system but to inform people about his many years of experience as a coach within the system, how the system works and let readers make up their own minds based on this information.

It was certainly comprehensive in terms of length and statistics. We were told about the number of years he has been involved , a brief summary of each year he was involved in terms of players and coaches involved, results etc… and the number of players who progressed through the squads to go on and play intercounty hurling. From reading it you certainly couldn’t question the amount of time and commitment that has gone into the role … and I am NOT here to do that.

However as I said before, by the time I finished reading it I felt I was none the wiser to be completely honest. For an article that I had hoped was going to explain how the development squads operate there was remarkably very little detail ( in a very long article) about what the coaches actually do. There was a lot of stats about results or outcomes if you like … but very little about the process that led to these outcomes.

I’ve been discussing this article with a couple of friends involved in coaching over the last few days, and we all would have liked to have learned the same things about the squad system…

What are the coaching principles? … How are players developed technically , tactically, physically and mentally????…. What does a typical training session look like ? How has coaching in the system evolved over the last 20 years…. How are coaches themselves educated and how are they being assessed???.,,, or are they being assessed???….. he touched on some of this but didn’t go into detail at all.

Maybe I was reading it wrong but the article seemed to rely heavily on the fact that a lot of intercounty players had come through the squads so the system must be working. But for me Kilkenny were always producing outstanding hurlers, some of the best in the history of the game before these squads ever existed.
It was nice to hear how many players that came through the squads went on to reach the top level… but for me it would have been more interesting to hear what specific role the development squads played in helping them get there.

I was hoping to come away with a better understanding of the coaching methods and the practical work being done on the training field.

Instead for an article that wasn’t supposed to be about defending the squads,… I have to say it felt like that to me …..rather than an explanation of their coaching methods. There was even some defending of our facilities which I’m sorry, are just indefensible. It’s not true to say a pitch is a pitch…. we need to have higher standards than that in my opinion.

Again this is in no way a criticism of Séamus or the development squad system at all … this is a criticism of the article that was supposed to give us all more clarity on the whole thing. If the goal was to genuinely inform people how the development squads system works it failed to do that for me anyway, and I think it would have benefited from fewer statistics and more insight into the actual work thats being done and more insight into the actual coaching.

We haven’t won a minor title since 2014 so has something gone wrong somewhere or something not working in how we are developing or preparing our players? …, maybe we just don’t have the quality of players coming through anymore, I don’t know… and maybe it’s not the fault of the development squads either but all I’m saying is that the article didn’t convince me either way if that was its intention.

With the club championship not that far away now, how are various clubs fixed in terms of lads abroad, injuries etc?

Obviously o loughlins will be without lawlor and molloy, and someone mentioned a couple of others have done cruciates. So hard to see them as challengers. Have dicksboro anyone back that was away like andy gaffney or bill sheeran? Harry shine Obviously a big addition.

Im sure there's plenty fellas in America for the summer doing a bit of hurling and partying too!

Be nice to hear how clubs are looking across senior, intermediate and junior.

Do you know what club shine is gone to out of interest?