ARMAGH club An Port Mor has made huge strides at underage level and that progress is down to the combination of hard work and creative thinking at the Blackwatertown outfit.
Brendan Nugent (coaching officer), Karl Jordan (PRO), Paul Turley (coaching development officer) and Josephine Strain (youth secretary) were at Wellington Park Hotel in Belfast to receive the ‘Best Coaching Initiative of the year’ award at the Irish News Club and Volunteer awards last week.
Starting at U6 level, An Port Mor have implemented an innovative underage skills system and integrated ‘five Cs’ – confidence, control, communication, commitment and concentration – across their coaching platforms. It is bearing fruit.
“The coaching structures are improving the club,” explained Brendan.
“We found that skills are important, but life skills are more important so that’s why we brought in coaching mentor Paul Turley who is instilling into the coaches how to coach our five Cs – confidence, commitment, communication, concentration and control.
“We do an extra coaching session on a Saturday morning to teach those life skills to the U6, U8, U10 and U12 groups and we have found that the children’s discipline in matches is improving big time, winning is not all-important, but it is about discipline.”
PRO Karl added: “It’s about taking part and getting the team strong, making sure we’re concentrating on improvement areas and looking to the key core skills and where the whole team can improve.
“We do six-week blocks of skill sessions and from them we develop through the year. We look at where we need to improve and we pick that skill and it will be our next six-week block.
“What is very important is to coach the coaches, because if you don’t coach the coaches then they don’t know how to coach the kids. We have developed a plan along with Paul Turley for them to improve their coaching and from that we’ll be learning from the kids – recording skill sets, developing further plans and learning from that.
“Our school link is the most important link to have because it has developed our growth within the club. Me and Brendan meet the principal of the St Jarlath’s PS in Blackwatertown on a regular basis, give them updates and get involved in coaching – not necessarily from our club – but it means that kids are interested in our club and will come down to the training.”
Alongside their work with the kids, An Port Mor concentrate on improving coaching and restricting drop-off among their teenage players
Brendan explained: “We are doing a lot of work from U6-12 but you can’t forget about the U14 to minor players.
“The GAA find that there’s a big drop off at that level so that’s why we’ve brought in the likes of Niall Morgan (Tyrone goalkeeper) to concentrate on core skills in those age groups.
“We are coaching them free-taking this month – we’ll bring in somebody from outside to work with our players.”
After the completion of an ambitious development programme, An Port Mor now have excellent facilities at their grounds and Karl says the club is determined to widen its profile.
“There is good youth coming through and there’s a good drive and enthusiasm and we’ve all recognised that we want to move the club on,” he said.
“We want to get the profile out there and not just around Blackwatertown and the surrounding areas, we want to get around Ireland and to ex-players in America. We’re trying to embrace the community and attract people to the club.”
