Let the children play

WE went out the door thousands of times together with gearbags on our shoulders and hope in our hearts. We followed the football dream together from under the trees in St Angela’s National School in Castlebar all the way to an All-Ireland Post-Primary Schools senior final in Pearse Park in Longford.
During that great journey I proudly stood on the sideline in Gaelic Park New York when my daughter Aisling and her Castlebar Mitchels team-mates worked a last minute goal to beat the homeside in a thriller. The two of us experienced a brilliantly meandering football journey together.
Late last Wednesday night I called her and talked football, as we often do. These days, both of us are aware of the eight-hour time difference between Mayo and Vancouver, so timing is important.
On Wednesday, Ais’ wanted to talk about Mayo’s upcoming All-Ireland minor quarter-final and how preparations were going, but I wanted to ask her opinion on the discussion revolving around whether Under-12 football should have a competitive element or not.
Seventeen years ago she started training with Mitchels on the back pitch in Castlebar. She was very proud to wear the red and yellow of her club into battle time after time, and also kept an eye on the proceedings of her parents’ clubs, Kilmeena and Ballycroy.
Ais’ was, and is, a dyed-in-the-wool football head. These days she lines out with Vancouver Eire Og and loves every second of it.
On Wednesday night, before I even asked her about the suggestion that Under-12 football should be non-competitive, I was certain of her answer. I knew she’d say ‘competition is great and kids need to experience defeat to build resilience’. I just knew she would.
I couldn’t have been more wrong!
“There’s no way it should be competitive. There was too much pressure on us at that age to be good and to win every game. We were so nervous in the run-up to games and as soon as we won a game, there was another one coming around the corner that had to be won too.
“I loved Cumann na mBunscol, and definitely think that it should be retained, but there should be a non-competitive tournament too, where kids can just go and play for the fun of it,” she told me.
It stopped me in my tracks. Like many adults involved with teams - I thought I knew what Ais’ and her friends wanted. I was wrong.
They had wanted a certain level of competition, but they also wanted to play ball with no need to worry about winning or losing. They wanted to be the best they could be on one hand, while also having an opportunity to play football for the sake of it.
These days, Ais’ goes training twice a week in Vancouver and plays for one of the club teams wherever and whenever she’s required. She enjoys it, she plays with her friends and has great craic.
There’s no pressure.
Interestingly, I was only off the call to Aisling when her partner, James, phoned. He wanted to give his tuppence-worth on the Under-12 debate too.
A few years ago, James won a Cumann na mBunscol title with St Pat’s Castlebar. He has a collection of medals from underage wins with Mitchels and proudly wore the blue of St Gerald’s too. 
Himself and Ais’ get on great but their thinking was slightly divergent on this occasion. “I loved the competitive element of Cumann na mBunscol and all underage football and I see nothing wrong with keeping it that way, but every team we played had coaches on the sideline going mad,” he said. “They wanted their lads to win, no matter what, and that couldn’t have been very enjoyable for the lads on the pitch.”
It was hard to disagree with James. In my view he hit the nail on the head.
Maybe we shouldn’t be too focused on whether scores are kept and cups given out at Under-12 level. Instead we should focus on educating the coaches and giving them a better understanding of what their players want. When I was coaching underage teams I thought they desired victory every time they went out and prepared them accordingly. I never actually asked the players what they wanted.
I was wrong!