Seán Moranpreviews the annual Games Development Conference, which will focus on coaching skills through play rather than practice

IN PREVIOUS years Pat Daly would have expected 300 or 400 applications in the week leading up to the conference. This time around by last Monday the GAA's annual Games Development Conference had sold out. A few coaches, caught unawares by the rush, were squeezed in, but for the first time when proceedings open this evening in Croke Park there will be no vacancies for walk-up delegates.

Over the coming two days nearly 800 will attend this year's conference. According to Daly, the GAA's head of games, the format has been tweaked just as it was a couple of years ago when a decision was taken to take the focus away from celebrity coaches and concentrate on those with more general experience.

Steps have also been taken to ensure all those interested throughout the association are able to access the presentations at Croke Park.

"We found we had too many parallel sessions," he says. "People want to see as much as possible and there was a lot of running around. But this time we'll be giving everyone a memory stick and all presentations will be available on the GAA website from Monday. Proceedings will also be broadcast live on the web for the second year.

"Psychology was a very big area in the past, but there has been less demand more recently. Topics come and go. We went with practicals (demonstration coaching sessions) a lot six or seven years ago. Then they disappeared, but this year they're back and we'll be able to use the lights at Croke Park and other technologies."

The conference will close tomorrow with an hour-and-a-half training session on the pitch conducted by Donal Buckley, the Limerick football coach; Michael McGeehin, director of Coaching Ireland; and Martin Fogarty, assistant manager of Kilkenny.

Psychology still makes an appearance, with Sunday Tribune journalist and sports psychologist Kieran Shannon talking about Handling the Big Occasion tomorrow afternoon.

Familiar names will also be in evidence, with new Dublin coach Mickey Whelan, who took St Vincent's to this year's All-Ireland club football title, as well as Fogarty in attendance.

Otherwise the theme of proceedings is coaching skills through play rather than practice.

"We are emphasising the games-based approach with speakers who practise what they preach," says Daly. "At all levels - kids, youth and adult - we would like that to be the underpinning philosophy. There are no magic bullets. The buzz phrases are 'player centred', 'games based' and 'ball contact'.

"We're trying to get away from the idea of training as being about drills in favour of games as the best way of communicating tactics and team play. For a long time there has been a lack of rationale and philosophy behind drills.

"The feedback from the Cúl camps - and we now have 80,000 attending these - is that kids want to play games, not do drills. A certain amount is needed for technical proficiency, but research shows that games are twice as useful and four times as enjoyable. You can achieve the same number of ball contacts in a small-sided game as in a long training session.

"Niall Moyna and Mickey Whelan would say that small-sided games are key to development, because 15-a-side tends to be monopolised by stronger players. Conditioned rules or modified rules are key to preparation. The more you drift from that world the more you run the risk of faddism.

"I said at the recent special congress that some people who went to watch Kilkenny train couldn't believe how ordinary it was. Ordinary training can produce extraordinary teams."

Organised by Daly with the assistance of games development manager Jimmy Darcy and education officer Peter Hogan, the conference starts this evening, and tomorrow morning's keynote speaker is Richard Shuttleworth of the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) speaking on Implementing a Games Based Approach to Training and Development.

"Richard Shuttleworth spent time here," said Daly. "He started to lecture in DCU but had only started when the Australian Institute of Sport head-hunted him. We have an arrangement with the AFL through which we share information on things like injury prevention. On the question of skills development, they referred us to the AIS."

Shuttleworth works at the institute in Canberra as a skill acquisition specialist in a number of elite sports, including rugby, rugby league and soccer.

"It can be a very theoretical area," according to Daly, "but this guy is very practical."