Page 25 - 2020ClareCamogieBoardAGM

U16 team report

At the start of November 2019 we made contact with clubs and 50 girls, which was
made up of players that had been Clare u15s, but also included others that we had
seen perform well in the club u16 championship. The management team was
Eleanor Walsh, Niamh Cooney, Aidan Hastings, Pat Nicholas and Billy Murphy. We
began with combined sessions of strength and conditioning and striking skills. After
asking a lot of different Strength and Conditioning coaches to come on board with
us, we were finally lucky to engage the services of a Tipperary based coach and he
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started the first of 8 sessions on November 30 . The cost of this coach and the
various venues that we had to hire because outdoor venues were unavailable to us,
was split between all the players. We had some guest coaches deliver wall ball
sessions, which sere beneficial to the girls. Going forward, we’d love to see more
coherency around S&C throughout all the county teams – that would have certainly
helped us during this time.

The girls really embraced and benefited from the programme. The delivery was first
class, and while we met just once a week, the girls were also expected to do their
own work daily from both an S&C perspective and striking perspective at home, in
between times. We did four sessions before Christmas, ending our last session with
a breakfast sponsored by the management in Parteens camogie's new indoor facility
in Corbally. We did another three after Christmas, with the latter three combined with
team play, rather than wall ball. We had the first of two nutrition talks with players
and parents and Anna McElhinney of Eatwise in January, which led us nicely to our
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first field training session on January 28 . The girls were encouraged to submit their
food diaries before the second nutrition talk in February and were given feedback on
them. Gaps in their daily intake of food were identified, particularly the lack of
calcium and vegetables in their daily diet. Anna gave practical suggestions on how to
address these.

We had entered both the A and B competition in Munster, the semi-finals which were
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down for March 7 and finals for March 14 . The A team was drawn against
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Waterford and the B team were drawn against the Limerick A team, who had been
graded at B (despite having won the u15A tournament earlier that year). In our
preparation for the Munster competition we played a challenge match against Cork
and St. Anne’s CC in Killaloe and trained in various clubs. A particular thanks to
Cratloe, who on numerous occasions let us use their hall, as a very wet and stormy
February again meant the pitches were unavailable and challenge matches
impossible to get. Also, individuals on the management paid for various venues too.

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On March 7 , the A team travelled a long distance to Fenor GAA Club, well outside
Waterford city which was hard on the players, and were beaten 0-16 to 0-7. The B
team travelled to Limerick IT where Limerick had got their times wrong and the team
wasn’t there to play us, but we waited on for them to arrive and lost on a score line of
1-9 to 2-1. This was the first day that no handshakes and minimum time indoors in
the dressing room were in place – something which we have now become very