BOYLAN TALKS SPORT: Some people need to listen to Cyndi Lauper

When the working day is done, girls just want to have fun”. Those lyrics alone underline why Cyndi Lauper’s smash hit is such an anthem for female expression. And why, nearly 40 years after its release, there’s still a stampede towards the nearest dancefloor once the familiar riff strikes up.

Mind you, judging by the story I heard during the week, it could be applied to young lads too. Or more pointedly in this case, to those ‘coaching’ - and the term needs to be utilised very loosely here - underage teams.

To preserve the dignity of all concerned, no names will be mentioned. Suffice to say that a friend of mine was aghast when her 10-year-old grandson showed her a text from one of his mentors which read “Be in (named gym) at 7.30 on our next training night for S & C training”.

Where does one even begin with such an abomination? Well, none of the young lad, his mother or grandmother knew what S & C (strength and conditioning training) was about. So the nearest the youngster got to an explanation was to say he’d more than likely be running round the gym.

Those of us a little more au fait with the scene would recognise it as professionally structured gym training. Involving weight training and more machines than reside in an amusement arcade. Not the type of thing any Tom, Dick or Harry should be doing with a team.

But here’s the real issue - what in the name of all that is sane do kids who are presumably going to be competing at under-11 need S & C training for? It’s not the Olympics or a World Cup we’re talking about here.

At this juncture it would appear that in this instance I owe the GAA an apology indeed.

There is a tendency within sports coaching - and to be honest I thought it was just a GAA thing - to be like sheep going out a gap. For those not agriculturally inclined, that is to say that when one takes off in a particular direction, the rest dutifully follow in behind.

So whether it was Ger Loughnane’s crack-of-dawn training sessions or Jim McGuinness’s purgatorial football or James Horan’s GPS trackers, teams everywhere, even club ones, get swept away with the fads of a given day. All seemingly ignoring the fact that absolutely none of it will make their players any better at putting the ball over the bar, in the net or over the line - whichever the sport in question requires.

Call me primitive or old fashioned if you wish but it would be confidently argued that if Mick O’Dwyer was in a position to be involved with a team, his idea of strength and conditioning would still be plenty of strong running with copious amounts of stretching and the involvement of a ball at every point possible.

Now, before anybody thinks I’ve just returned from a holiday in Jurassic Park, one is not dismissing the importance of gym work. Of course it has an important role to play in top level senior sport. Which GAA is in all but name now, though some might never admit it. My ‘beef’ - as I heard a young person describe a disagreement during the week - is with juvenile players doing such things. They don’t need it. Kids are naturally active and fit. So training and/or coaching needs to be structured towards what will be needed. Honing of skills.

In other words, ballwork, ballwork and more ballwork. When Meath football was at its zenith in the late 1980s and for as much of the ‘90s as he was involved, Brian Stafford was known to carry a bag of footballs in his car and pull in at any pitch he might pass and slot over a few frees.

Likewise, Wayne McCarthy became famous long before he donned the blue and navy with distinction himself for being Charlie Redmond’s ball boy when the most distinctive place kicking style in Gaelic Football was crafted in Erins Isle. There are a lot of Dublin footballers of certain vintage who wouldn’t have the collection of souvenirs as is the case without the fireman’s red hot boot.

In much more recent times, one of the greatest phenomena to grace GAA grounds and facilities here, there and everywhere have been Hurling Walls.

Hurling is without question the most skilfully demanding sport in the world and - though it might be overly simplistic and not scientific enough for some of the gullible guru generation - practice and lots of it is still the best way to improve a players skill set and confidence.

This was something that was very much evident in my own club when, what is scarily two decades ago now, people like Paul Reilly and John Watters Jnr and Neil Hackett took up coaching roles with a variety of underage teams and one of the most remarked-upon sights in the locality at the time was the amount of young players to be seen around the village with hurl and sliotar in hand.

It goes back even further than that though. I recall St Peter's esteemed former chairman Sean McManus once telling me that when Enda was very young he gave him a particular ball - not a sliotar or a tennis ball - but one which was ideal for teaching a youngster the rudiments of the relationship between hurl and ball. And that when the grandchildren reached a certain age they too would be bequeathed the training ball.

That’s how you encourage and develop young players. Not in a gym. Kids just want to have fun.