Coaching Corner WITH DAMIEN SHERIDAN

To keep in touch with everything on a week-to-week basis you can keep an eye on the Coaching & Games Section on the Longford GAA website www.longfordgaa.ie where fixtures and notes will be updates weekly by County Coach Damien Sheridan.

Coach Education & Workshops

Our Award 1 Youth & Adult course started last Saturday the20th in Ard Scoil Phadraig sports hall Granard. This course was attended by 19 coaches and the tutors who gave the course were Paddy O Connor, TJ Ward and Damien Sheridan. The second of the four days of the course will be this Saturday the 27th again in Granard and the tutors who will be giving the course will be James Devane and Tadgh Fennin from Kildare and James Heffernan and Eddie Bouabbse from Westmeath. The course is aimed at coaches who are working with football teams from U13 to adult level in both the ladies and men's code and the last two dates of the course will be the 11th December and the 22nd of January.

Schools Coaching

Longford Coaching & Games have first year coaching up and running in all our post primary schools now and we have been getting a good response and hopefully before Christmas we will be able to run a first year blitz for all the Longford schools which will have a primary focus on giving football to students who are not making their schools U14 team.

Transition Year Coaching Courses

Last week we began rolling out our TY coaching course in Cnoc Mhuire Granard and this week we started in Scoil Mhuire Longford with two different groups. This course entails two sessions with the group where they learn about coaching techniques and practice those techniques within their own group and then the 3rd session is a practical session within one of the local national schools and we would hope that we would get a few coaches with interest and ability who would continue to practice their coaching within the Primary school as part of the remainder of their school year.

Club Projects

Over the last few weeks both Paddy and Damien were in contact with every minor club within the county in relation to possible projects that each club would find beneficial to them pre Christmas. To date some of our clubs have came back with some ideas and we would encourage all clubs to have a think about how we could help in the coming weeks and make contact with either Paddy or Damien on the numbers below.

Primary School Hurling Centres

Over the last five weeks Longford Coaching & Games have been running our hurling centres throughout the county. These centres were based in Granard and Killashee GAA pitches, on Tuesdays, Drumlish GAA pitch on Wednesdays and in Carrickedmond GAA pitch on Fridays.  All kids between 4th, 5th and 6th classes from the surrounding primary schools were invited and welcome to attend the sessions. We provided any child who didn’t have their own Hurley or Helmet with the use of our equipment for these sessions.

The sessions were put in place so as to encourage participation in hurling throughout the whole county and to give anyone who would like to try out the game the opportunity without any expense. These sessions were hit and miss between the four areas with the Granard sessions been very well attended every week but for various reasons the other venues counted for poor attendances and it will have to be assessed whether we will run these sessions in the new year. Should anyone require further information please give one of our coaches a call on the numbers at the end of these notes.

Madstones U-8 Indoor Football

Since the 1st week of October we have been running our U8 indoor football which ran for six weeks and came to an end last Friday with our final blitzes in Kenagh hall. This year we used three halls, Ard Scoil Phadraig Granard, St. Mels College Longford, both on Wednesday nights and Kenagh Hall on Friday nights and we had two, one hour, slots booked each night with only two clubs attending during each hour so as to give all players as much playing time as possible. 

All these blitzes ran off really well with good participation from all our clubs and we would like to thank all your mentors and parents for bringing their players and kids to these blitzes and making them so successful. Also a special thanks to Patrick Maguire for running the Ard Scoil Phadraig blitzes over the last six weeks. The final piece to the indoor football jig saw is the Christmas party in Madstones Play Center on the Athlone Road. All our clubs will be divided up between two different Friday nights with the dates being the 3rd and the 10th of December and clubs can attend between 6.30 and 9.00 on their given night.

The following is the list of clubs who will be attending on each night: December 3rd Ballymahon/Forgney, Ballymore, Carrick Sarsfields, Clonbroney, Clonguish Og, Gratten Gaels, Killoe Og, St. Mels and Longford Slashers. December 10th Northern Gaels, Shannon Gaels, Southern Gaels, St. Colmcilles, St. Dominics, St. Francis, St. James, St. Vincents, Granard and Wolfe Tones.

Should anyone require any information or assistance from our coaches please do not hesitate to contact them on:

Paddy O'Connor   086-1904060      paddy.oconnor.gda.longford@gaa.ie

Damien Sheridan 087-9126556      damien.sheridan.gda.longford@gaa.ie