Exploring the role of play in skill development – dr phil kearney.

Photo by Rosario Fernandes on Unsplash

As a coach, achieving your goals for learners (e.g., develop a love of the game; progress their skill development) depends upon two things:

• what you do within your sessions, and
• what you inspire players to do outside of your practice sessions.

That’s the topic I explored with coaches from the Cricket Ireland Coaches Association at their conference in November. Here’s the key slide which I used to open and close my presentation, encouraging coaches to think about how much they think about these two areas.

Within the session, I encouraged coaches to discuss:

– What do players do outside of your practice sessions?

– What do you want players to do outside of your practice sessions?

– How do you inspire what players do outside of your practice sessions?

The word inspire is deliberate – how are messages and examples about outside play and practice infused into training sessions?

The word inspire is deliberate – how are messages and examples about outside play and practice infused into training sessions?

A video highlight of the conference can be seen here.

For cricket coaches, two books that might inform them further on this topic are First Tests: Great Australian Cricketers and the Backyards that Made Them by Steve Cannane and Ian Renshaw and Stephen Rollnick’s Dynamic Coaching.

Thank you to MSc Applied Sports Coaching graduate Stephen Maxwell for the invitation and all participating coaches for engaging with the session.

Dr. Phil Kearney is the Course Leader for the MSc Applied Sports Coaching at the University of Limerick. A Fellow of the Higher Education Authority, his teaching and research centres on the domain of skill acquisition, particularly as it relates to youth sport. A regular contributor to RTÉ Brainstorm, Phil is a member of the Gaelic Athletic Association’s Player & Coach Development Advisory Group, an Associate Editor for Perceptual and Motor Skills and is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Motor Learning and Development. Phil is a co-founder of Movement and Skill Acquisition Ireland.