We need both the chicken & the egg!

Regular readers of this column will know I'm fond of a good cinema reference but as tempting as it was to go with “Build it and they will come” from Kevin Costner's classic “Field of Dreams” when it comes to documenting my thoughts on the fabulous state of the art Shannonside Recreational Campus which will come to fruition in the near future, instead I've gone with the classic of the chicken and the egg!

You know the drill - which comes first, the chicken or the egg? You can have the chicken without the egg but without the egg, the chicken wouldn't exist! 

It is the sort of philosophical debate that I quite enjoy when it comes to the sporting arena one example being the old, almost plaintive “Believe” banner that popped up at almost every Leitrim game of consequences for about a decade or more. The question is did Leitrim simply need to believe to achieve a winning performance or did producing a winning performance inculcate the necessary belief to achieve a long awaited breakthrough and maybe a trophy or two?

Build it and they will come!

THE LAST POINT

Roscommon's historic All-Ireland Minor championship triumph of 2006 is an event that transformed the belief of an entire county and launched the Rossies into a sphere where they're a legitimate top eight team. So did that famous win over Kerry in Ennis tilt the balance or was it the work behind the scenes by  coaches,  seeking new ways of doing things, of developing their players that had both the technical skills and physical attributes to down the big boys of gaelic football?

It is a curious question because there are lots of areas where they boast  facilities without equal but they can't deliver success in their chosen discipline purely because the most basic ingredient of all, their players or athletes, don't have the necessary skills and attributes, both physical or mental,  to rise to the  level needed for victory.

So coaching is the golden ticket? Of course it is but, in the spirit of the chicken and the egg, I've got to stress that facilities are also the missing ingredient and we don't have to look too far for some wonderful examples!

What Manorhamilton's Sean McDermott Boxing Club have done with Dean Clancy, Dearbhla Rooney and so many others over the last decade and what they might achieve in the years to come is a classic example of this trope.

Boxing's requirements are maybe a little easier to meet in terms of facilities - a good sized gym is a good bit smaller than say a football field or an athletics track or basketball court and the Bee Park Resource Centre is invaluable  but all the gyms in the world won't succeed unless you've got someone like John Gilligan or Jason Clancy or  James Kelly holding the reins.

My own sport of athletics has an incredible tradition in this county with Eddie Leddy, Laura Reynolds, Colin Griffin and Breege Connolly all competing in the Olympics but all were in endurance events where tracks and gyms maybe weren't so important. Yet without someone like  Padraig Griffin to guide these athletes, we wouldn't have seen these Leitrim people star on the biggest stage in world sport.

Carrick's own Frances Cryan was blessed to live right alongside the Shannon but without the Carrick Rowing Club boathouse and the influence of Aidan Nangle, would she have risen to the heights she did? Would Frances  have even made it into a boat?

Over the years, I vacillated between 'it's the facilities' and 'it's the coaching' arguments - my own experiences coaching with  Carrick-on-Shannon AC saw athletes make a virtue out of overcoming the lack of top class facilities to achieve their dreams, using the hills around the town to build strength & endurance and developing speed on the roads and parks of the area.

Build it and they will come - part 2

THE LAST POINT

Yet it is undeniable that the more technical the event, the greater the need for facilities - the simple act of trying to sprint on a quiet footpath or road is completely different to what you experience if you are wearing spikes and hurtling down a tartan track, and it shows.

Many of you might not realise this but over the past 15 years, Ireland has transformed from a nation of distance runners and the odd thrower into one of sprinters and jumpers and I truly believe that the transformation is because of the facilities - and the coaching!

When I was a youngster running for Clonliffe Harriers, we had the luxury of training three times a week on our track at Morton Stadium but Dublin only had two tracks at that stage. There was another in Tullamore, one more down in Cork, another up in Belfast and maybe one down in Limerick - nothing at all in Connacht and large parts of the country didn't know what a tartan track looked like.

Now, there are three within 15 miles of each other in Donegal, Clones boasts a superb facility while Connacht can proudly claim tartan tracks in Mayo (2), Sligo and Galway (3) and more to come while Athlone is a stone's throw away from the Shannon. There are tracks  in Carlow, Kilkenny, Castleisland, Drogheda, Navan, Waterford, Greystones and a few more I'm not sure of, while Dublin now has six serving its inhabitants.

It's no wonder that we're now producing sprinters than can match the best in the world  - back in my youth, an 11 second clocking could win you the national senior title, now it wouldn't even win you an All-Ireland Schools U17 crown - and that's down to both the facilities and the coaching.

Ratoath, a town that has gone from less than 600 inhabitants in 1991 to well over 10,000 right now, doesn't have a tartan track but they do have a tartan sprinting facility that has produced relay teams that are sweeping the boards at All-Ireland level - all from an area without a tradition in the sport but one that has the facilities and obviously the coaching expertise.

Better facilities means that coaches are able to do a better job with their charges, a simple enough fact but one that is so blindingly obvious that we almost miss it - better facilities lead to better performances, better performances demand better coaching and then we're back to the chicken and the egg argument!

Build it and they will come!

THE LAST POINT

That's why last Thursday's public information evening for the Shannonside Recreational Campus is a seminal moment for those with dreams of sporting glory in this entire area - we don't know if there is a Usain Bolt out there but we don't have a women's soccer league in these parts yet both Dearbhaile Beirne & Muireann Devaney have worn the green of Ireland!

It's not going to happen overnight - getting there will take a lot of sacrifice (mentally, physically and especially monetarily) but the people behind the SRC deserve our undying gratitude for their unstinting efforts in bringing this project so far - it is a labour of love for them but one that will impact on countless generations to come.

One final thought, just look at what the incredible sports people of Leitrim are achieving as it is - imagine what we might achieve when the SRC is fully up and running in the years to come?