Johnny McIntosh: Invest in people before pitches

EVERY team at every level in Antrim is basically playing in the second or third tier, and to me that’s pretty stark. I know that’s not new, and there are bright spots like the performances of our camogs, but, in general, we’re not operating at the highest level. We can’t say we’re weak in one particular code – we just seem to be weak across the county.

Recently, we did a presentation in Antrim that began with coaches and getting more people involved. But halfway through that presentation, the next one was about the redevelopment of Dunsilly, a project that’s probably going to cost in excess of five million pounds. It almost felt like: “Yeah, okay, you talk away about coaching, but we’re more interested in Dunsilly.”

We need to make a decision in Antrim, and we need to make it right now, about where we’re going to invest our money. We need to invest consistently over 10 years, and that will inevitably mean difficult choices.

Someone said to me recently: if you think about Dublin, probably the richest county in Ireland, what infrastructure has Dublin GAA built in the last 25 years? Very little. They’ve invested nearly every penny into coaches.

It’s not rocket science. You can see the results. Look at Roscommon – you see constant stories about their footballers, their U17s, their U20s. Look at Westmeath and Louth.

A Westmeath school won the Hogan Cup this year. But where did that start? It started with massive investment in coaching. Not new pitches, floodlights or facilities – coaching. And I think that’s where Antrim is sadly lacking.

There are two things, in my opinion, that need done in Antrim. First, there needs to be somebody willing to make a strong decision and say: we are prioritising coaching.

The problem is there’s no obvious legacy with coaching. There’s no building left behind. When you step away from a county role, you can’t point to a stand or a facility and say, “I built that.” Coaching doesn’t leave something tangible behind.

But we need to sit down in Antrim and say: we’re going to commit whatever it takes, maybe £500,000 a year, and we’re going to ringfence that solely for the development of coaching across the county. We’re going to do it for 10 years and see where it takes us.

Investing in infrastructure is fine if you already have the foundations, but you’ve got to invest in people. You’ve got to invest in coaches if you want any chance of success.

Stagnation is probably the word I would use about where we are now. No movement forward.

Somebody said something brilliant to me at a meeting one night: “Antrim doesn’t put up roadblocks – it puts up diversions.”

They don’t stop you outright from doing something, but they divert you and divert you until the whole process becomes a waste of time and nobody wants to keep pushing it.

I hate constantly criticising my own county. I know things aren’t perfect everywhere. But since my last column, after losing to Down, we then we went to Laois knowing we had to win, and we were comprehensively beaten again, which effectively ended our Joe McDonagh Cup hopes.

For us to sit down and create a real strategy for football and hurling, we’re going to struggle because we don’t seem to have any direction at the minute.

It’s very sad. It’s very disappointing. And honestly, unless something changes in the next few months, nothing is ever going to change. It’ll just continue to be a cycle of annual reviews that get shelved, revisited a few years later, and then shelved again. Round and round we go.

It’s frustrating when you see other counties starting to rise through the ranks.

Maybe it’s cultural. Maybe we don’t want change. Maybe the changes required are too hard. Maybe we’re scared of change.

A lot of the mentality around initiatives like Gaelfast seems to be about participation rather than setting standards for excellence and high achievement. There are a lot of things there that need reviewed in my opinion, and reviewed quickly. But again, I say “review” when what I really mean is action.

Honestly, within five minutes I could probably name five separate reports that have been done in the last few years. The place is drowning in reports, reviews and recommendations, but the action that comes out of them is absolutely nil.

To try and put a positive spin on things, one thing that did come out of the meeting was that there is a massive appetite for change.

Clubs spoke passionately and strongly about wanting change, and that was encouraging.

People involved in the hurling development committee especially were enthusiastic. Every club, to a man, said this needs to happen. But where the negativity creeps in is that same sense of stagnation, the feeling that just because people want change doesn’t mean it’s actually going to happen.

Look at hurling in Dublin. It’s taken them a long time, but they’ve been on a 20-year journey. There have been small signs of progress along the way – a National League title, club All-Irelands, wins over major counties.

Now Dublin are beginning to edge towards the top table. They beat Galway at the weekend, they beat Limerick last year, and you can see the culture beginning to grow there.

Antrim won’t get there any time soon unless we invest in coaches, invest in people, and invest in long-term coaching programmes.