Joe Gamble: I get more out of coaching underage players than League of Ireland
Joe Gamble loves passing on his experience to the next generation. Picture: Eddie O'Hare
ADDICTED to the game, Joe Gamble spends at least six days a week on the pitch and wouldn't have it any other way.
The father of five from Togher had a superb playing career that spanned over 16 years and saw him play for a number of teams across England and Ireland, most notably his local club Cork City as well as being capped twice for the national side before finishing his career in Singapore as player-assistant coach at DPMM FC. After retiring as a player, Gamble moved into full-time coaching before returning to Cork City as their first-team assistant coach.
He realised the hard way, that valuing his family and himself is a lot more important than the abuse that can be got from the sidelines.
"I always imagined I would manage in the League of Ireland after playing and while I did experience it being involved with Limerick, Waterford and Cork City in various positions and my most honest opinion now is I’ll never do it again," said Gamble.
"I’ve five kids and a great wife, a brilliant family and I’m not prepared to sacrifice that working 24/7 travelling all over the country, working with people at clubs who are clowns, to be honest. I’ve been shafted too many times both as a player and coach by clubs and all for what, so I can get abuse from people because we didn’t win the game."
While coaching in the League of Ireland is no longer an interest of Gambles, his love for coaching is still very evident and coaching kids is something he is very passionate about. Having set up his very successful Player Development Academy alongside Craig Donnellan, the An Post worker is enjoying giving kids the opportunities he missed out on as a child.
"We started up the PDA, Player Development Academy, over two years ago in College Corinthians who by the way have been unbelievably supportive of myself and Craig Donnellan since we ventured into this. We have an excellent coaching team with John O’Flynn, Mark McNulty, Danny Murphy and Barbara O'Connell, a wealth of experience from a playing point of view plus experience coaching at the highest level in this country.
"The opportunities kids have nowadays are nothing like I had, they simply weren’t there. Our extra training sessions were on the street all day every day, unfortunately, everything is structured organised dates and extra training sessions, that’s just the way society is now.
"I wish I had some of the opportunities of course, for example, our PDA 2013s, who are U11, are this Friday in Limerick to play in a tournament where we will play against Shelbourne, Shamrock Rovers, St Kevin’s Boys plus a whole host of teams around Munster, some of the powerhouses of Irish football. The experience and learning will be huge for all of the kids involved. We’ve over 180 kids a week through our academy all over Cork so I’ve no doubt there is a reason why.
"All kids need to be constantly doing the fundamentals of football as 85% of your technical ability is formed before the age of 14 so if you are a later starter of not training properly in those technical attributes you simply will not reach the higher levels, so our advice to all the kids at the PDA is 10-15 minutes a day no whatever what the weather is like."
Cork City find themselves fighting a relegation battle. Gamble hopes they can stay up as he believes they are too big of a club to play in the First Division.
"I never found myself in City's situation where my team were fighting to stay up in a relegation battle I was fortunate enough that we had some great teams and some of the best players to ever play for Cork City. It’s a terrible position to be in and the players will know what’s needed.
"I'm sure at this stage they are sick of listening to people, so-called experts trying to tell them what they need to do. I just wish they don’t get relegated, City are too big of a club to be in Division 1 and I hope they can avoid going down."
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