Dividing young GAA players by ability can be ‘very beneficial’, research finds

By Gráinne Ní Aodha, Press Association

The approach to divide young GAA players into teams based on their ability can be “very beneficial” if done correctly, a study has found.

PhD researcher Dr David Moran, who was formerly a games promotion officer at various Dublin clubs, said the issue of GAA “streaming” is an emotive one for parents and their children.

The process involves separating young players into different teams based on their ability, and is a topical issue as coaches put plans in place for the year ahead.

“During my time as a games promotion officer, the question about streaming was the one that I was asked about more than any other topic,” Dr Moore told the Press Association.

“This question was brought to me on at least a weekly basis for eight years, and I never really had an answer to give them, because there was no research, and there was nothing there for coaches.”

Mr Moore said his qualitative research paper, entitled Grouping By Ability In Youth Sport: Streaming In Gaelic Games, is the first of its kind to examine sentiments and experiences of streaming.

It was carried out as part of a wider project in collaboration with the GAA Insights and the Coaching and Expertise Lab (CoEx Lab) at Dublin City University.

Over the course of two months, Mr Moore interviewed 85 players, parents and coaches on the side of pitches at various clubs, both urban and rural, across Ireland.

“One of the issues with streaming is teams do it differently within a club, clubs do it differently from club to club, counties do it differently. There’s no real code, it’s not a coherent landscape.

“So for example, in Dublin, some codes promote streaming from under 11 and other codes don’t promote streaming to under 13.”

He said that he expected “a lot of push back” against streaming but did not find that sentiment among parents, coaches and players.

“There was very, very little push back against streaming in and of itself,” he said.

“There was frustration about how it was done, but there was no real frustration or negativity towards it.”

He said there were three main themes from his research: one was that streaming children into teams based on ability created a sense of community, and also challenged children appropriately when done correctly.

“If it’s completely mixed ability and somebody’s coaching, they’re dealing with 70-80 kids on the side of the pitch, it’s almost crowd control, people are put into groups (randomly), and then every Saturday when they go to play a game, they’re playing with different kids, and there’s different coaches, and there was no continuity from week to week.

“Streaming brought a sense of continuity. It brought a sense of identity, being part of a team.

“The kids spoke really highly about that, the parents really recognise the value of that as well.

“Another really important one was the idea of an appropriate level of challenge.

“So a lot of people reflected on prior to the introduction of streaming, the stronger kids being able to completely dominate games, and some of the weaker kids being left behind or not really being involved in the game.

“In that situation, neither of those two kids is getting a really good challenge to help them develop.

“Streaming has the ability, has the potential anyway, to provide an appropriate level of challenge.

“I spoke to a lot of parents, one stands in particular, it was on the side of a pitch at an under-13 D game, and she was saying that her son wasn’t involved during Go Games (mixed ability games for under 12s), didn’t really enjoy it.

“All of a sudden, under 13 playing with the D team, she was saying he’s not the best on the team, but he contributes, and he’s really happy now because he has a role to play.”

But he said people were frustrated by how resources are allocated, by organisational constraints to streaming, and in particular by the use of streaming to win matches.

“There were reflections from a lot of parents – parents particularly and coaches of kind of lower ability teams – that the A team get the best training slots, and they get the best equipment, they get the new set of jerseys, and they’re the ones who get the social media posts, and the B team or the C team or the D team tend to not get their fair allocation.

“There was a lack of ability to change, to move between streams, was another issue. This came a lot from parents, and I think maybe they were maybe missing out on the idea that some of the decisions that the coaches were making were bound by organisational constraints.”

He raised an example of interviewing a boy who was starting on the pitch of an under-15s of an A team playing in the championship semi-final after having spent previous years on the C team of that club.

“In most counties, once you play a certain amount of games at a certain level, you can’t drop to a level below that,” he said.

“So coaches didn’t have the ability to facilitate a huge amount of changes, but it was definitely a frustration from parents that they weren’t maybe doing as much as they could.”

He said there was “a huge amount of frustration” about players being pulled from other streaming abilities to win matches.

“There was a huge amount of frustration at coaches of, let’s say, an under-15 B team playing against another under-15 B team and one of those coaches brings up players from the under-14 A team and it completely changed the dynamic of the game.”

Asked about how common this was, he said: “Every coach that I spoke to said that they don’t do it, but every coach that I spoke to said that other coaches do do it.

“It wasn’t rare. Let’s say it was definitely common.”

Mr Moore said that while people can be “apprehensive” about streaming, it is simply a tool to group players together.

“When it’s implemented in an appropriate way, it can be very, very beneficial,” he said.

“If you look at sports, youth GAA and most youth sports in general, streaming is almost inherent within the sport, because when they get to under 13, they get put into divisions – division one, division two etc – so it’s part of the sport.

“Rather than being scared of it or apprehensive or trying to fight against it, streaming can be a very, very valuable tool, in my opinion, but it’s how we do it.”