It's no country for old men

[snoopy snoopy dog dog]

Pretty good read. Mention is made of learning from past mistakes (such as being over reliant on schools and the poorly conditioned u19 World Cup squad a couple of years ago) and the need not to forget about the AIL as a development tool for players who come to the system late (like James Coughlan who's mentioned and Mike Ross who isn't). Leinster and Ulster seem to be on the right path according to this article while Munster are beginning to catch up - in an article in the Sunday Times today, Tony McGahan mentions that their academy is two years behind Leinster's at present. Connacht aren't worth mentioning!

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http://www.independent.ie/sport/rugby/its-...en-1924068.html

If you were reading your daily rugby coverage early last week, or tuning into sports broadcasts on tv and radio, the name of Stephen Archer will ring a bell. The 21-year-old prop came off the bench after an hour for his Magners League debut, in Murrayfield on Friday night, and did well. Well enough perhaps to start next weekend, given Darragh Hurley's injury situation, and the fact that currently Munster are in the horrors and Archer is unlikely to make it any worse. Perhaps it's the name 'Academy' but every time you hear that one of their number -- especially a front-row forward -- is being called up to the front line you think of schoolboys. And of course that's where their selection process starts now. Earlier and earlier in rugby we are lining up teenagers and hoping they mature into the finished article.

Twenty one years ago in Belfast, a member of the Australian coaching staff gave a module to aspiring Irish coaches on talent identification and its importance in securing a bright future. He was talking to the wrong people. It was the IRFU he needed to educate first -- they would have run a mile at the time -- and in any case his audience that day thought talent identification was something you might do in a pub of a Saturday night.

More recently it has become priority number one in the modern game: finding the next crop and cultivating them so that they grow up straight and true. In a recent media briefing IRFU high performance director Allen Clarke outlined where the Union were going with their horticultural theme.

"We're not looking to use the academies as a screening process to see who's suitable to go on and play professional rugby," he said. "We want to have that job done in so far as we're happy that the players we take in are the right ones."

From an efficiency aspect it is pleasing not to have to turf out half the intake for doing drugs, or losing the ability or appetite to play rugby, before the investment pays off. But in the real world, is it possible to box everyone off when they start shaving and presume their profile will look exactly the same in five years?

This is standard procedure in highly specialised sports. If you trawl through the profiles of Canada's ice hockey stars, for example, you'll find that in the first place a high percentage of them were born close to the cut-off point at age grade. So they tended to be bigger than the other kids, and made the A teams; which attracted the majority of the coaches' attention; which made them better players; and which finally got them into rep squads. And once they were on that treadmill it moved too fast for anyone else to climb on board.

Rugby is not in that league, for when ice hockey is picking its development squads we still don't know what positions our kids will fill, because they are still growing. Unfortunately though we're heading in the same direction because of the massive swing towards the triple target of bigger, faster, stronger. There is still room for those who come late to the party, but they are rare exceptions. James Coughlan is such a rarity.

Jim Williams used to joke that the only reason Coughlan, 29, fell into a Munster development contract at the venerable age of 23 was because he was Declan Kidney's son. This of course is untrue, but it was because Kidney took the time to go and watch his old club, and was willing to take a punt on an intelligent and abrasive footballer, that the Dolphin man got in the door long after all the others were seated at the table. He had been briefly on Munster's foundation course five years earlier, but it hadn't led to anything.

So he went to college and got a suit and a job and played club rugby with Dolphin. And forgot about rep rugby. Then, after scoring a lot of tries and consistently being the team's key player, Kidney made the offer and he took the plunge. Suddenly Coughlan found himself in the company of people who had a 'training age' far superior to his. In other words, the time they had spent doing the right stuff in the gym and with their diet and rest was far superior to his. He started by trying to make up for lost time with his conditioning, and being single-minded on the field.

"I'd just put my head down and hit a fella as hard as I could," he recalls. "And if it wasn't hard enough then it was kind of get up and hit him harder again. You had to have that bullish mentality about it, you know? There were times, especially in the first few years where you're going 'Jeez that fella's huge'. But as long as you're honest and you're busting your ass and the coaches can see you're not being blown backwards then you can keep going."

He's a bit like a mature student because the vast majority of the traffic into our academies flows in straight from school. By that point they will have played representative rugby through their school or club, and as the process develops under Allen Clarke's National Talent Programme, the provinces will have been shaping these players from the age of 16 instead of 18. What meets them on arrival in the provinces depends on which one takes them in.

In Ulster it's not a case of signing on the dotted line for three years, rather of seeing how it works out initially before you might get bumped up to a point where they're paying you between £3k-5k a year. And depending on your status in the group either you'll be full-time involved with the senior squad, as are nine of Ulster's crop of 20, or else you'll be committing to a weekly regimen of four weights sessions, two skill, two speed, two with your club, and a game.

"Yes it's a busy schedule but it's a good one," says manager Gary Longwell. "We've just moved in to Newforge along with the senior squad and as well as that we have access to Sport NI's facility at Jordanstown which is fantastic." The stick that hovers over the carrot is the prospect of being fined or turfed out if you're not responding with the right amount of effort. "Generally though the attitude is absolutely first class," Longwell says.

Ulster's operation is looking pretty good now given the number of academy lads who have made an impact from the friendly games in early season through to the Magners and Heineken Cup action. It will get better too for the arrival of Jonathan Bell earlier this year to help Niall Malone as an elite player development officer.

Munster's operation now is better than it was but clearly Leinster is the best place to be. The provincial academies were set up in 2004 (they were preceded by the National Academy in 1995 and the IRFU Foundation in 1993) when it was decided to regionalise the operation. Except that it wasn't as simple as transferring the quality of the IRFU version into the four provinces. Leinster were the first to realise this and spent months in the planning stage before the operation went live.

So when the curtain was lifted on the provincial set-ups they were costumed and scripted and ready to roll. They had brought in outside help to review their model. They had it recognised by HETAC (Higher Education & Training Awards Council), which not only afforded it an educational status in itself, but also allowed patrons to make tax free donations because of that status.

The others were in varying stages of preparation, but infamously Munster tried to reclaim some of the ground by photocopying Leinster's plan and handing it out like a road map. It led them down a few side-roads. This happened before Ian Sherwin came into the job there as manager and he reckons that currently they are on the right road.

"There's no doubt we've kicked on a bit now in terms of the modules the fellas have to complete each week and when they have to do them," he says. "Interestingly there weren't as many fellas who made Magners League debuts last year but we'll have more this year. There were fewer injuries last year but this year you've seen the importance of having a good academy group in waiting and ready to come in. I think a lot of people were taken aback by the performance of the academy lads in the early-season game against Sale. A lot of people wouldn't have known who they were but they were there because they are recognised talents."

One of the stumbling blocks around the country until last season was the control exerted by the schools over their players, where the goal was the pursuit of silverware rather than the long-term development of the player. Again it was Leinster who were the first to address this. And its effect has been illustrated by their dominance of the Ireland U20 side in the last two seasons where their players are ahead of the rest in physical conditioning and skill.

Getting access to schools players earlier is key to the success of Clarke's programme. He watched and winced two years ago as an Ireland U19 squad were tossed about like rag dolls in the World Cup in Belfast. Most of them didn't feature in the Ireland U20 side the next season. They had come through a schools system that left them physically unprepared for the real world.

The plan now is to get these kids sorted by the time they're 16 so they have three years' training under their belts by the time they are being finally assessed for entry to the provincial academies. It's critical to have the schools -- and to a lesser extent the clubs -- on board for this process.

"I think that relationship has moved on a bit and more than that it's exposed us to the guys who are conditioning the players at all levels," says Colin McEntee in Leinster. "We're educating the coaches who are dealing with the 13s and 14s and 15s and some of these guys shouldn't be even doing weights. It's about players being able to manage their own body before they put any weight on it. Especially on the way up, players have to understand the game, but they've got to be allowed play the game. Particularly at a younger age you've got to take the parameters away and let them enjoy the experience for what it is. It's about getting the balance right between skills work, and playing the game."

But by the time they are at 16 the conditioning starts in earnest. And each session goes into the investment account for withdrawal when, like Stephen Archer, the senior coach comes calling. Talk to the academy managers and they all say how important it is to leave the door open for latecomers, but it's getting harder and harder to find candidates. And without them the academies run the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Perhaps the streamlined Division 1A of the AIL will throw up a few more. You would hope the talent spotters are spending as much time watching that competition as they are running after the kids.

- Brendan Fanning

Sunday Independent[/b]