Lorna Barry: IRFU Women’s National Talent Squads – Bridging the Gap
In May 2023, I was one of eight new employees added to the IRFUs Women’s Development Pathway. Alongside, three other Athletic Development (AD) Coaches and four Pathway Talent Coaches our goal is to bridge the gap between our domestic and high-performance levels of the game. In years gone by, if a female Irish rugby player was to break into a senior international squad, their stepping stones were few and wide. Typically, these athletes would play week on week in the Women’s All Ireland League (WAIL) with their club, they would briefly jump into an Interprovincial squad for a short provincial campaign and then leap into a Six Nations campaign. The issue is obvious, these players, having talent in abundance were not prepared for the physical challenges presented by international match demands, never mind the basic international camp week. Inevitably, injuries occurred, player availability was affected and team performance suffered.
Twelve months after stepping into my new role, I can now reflect on how the landscape of the women’s rugby pathway is evolving. That same talented rugby player seeking international honours has more opportunity to develop across the year, with some of those gaps being bridged by new competition structures and a more gradual incline into our annual flagship competition. The WAIL, Interpros, Celtic Challenge, Global XV, and 6 Nations provide us coaches with physical milestones to develop our athletes towards, giving us tangible markers to hit across the season. More specifically, from an AD perspective, the on-feet demands of each competition allow us to gradually build the athletes' tolerance to specific running loads, particularly within the training week. Using GPS monitoring, the previous twelve months have shown that identified athletes in the top-performing teams in the WAIL typically meet similar match demands as the Celtic Challenge when the top five/six sides compete against each other. However, the mismatch within the remaining league fixtures, as well as the standard training week achieved at club level sits below the training intensity during a standard Celtic Challenge week. This intensity is gauged by looking at high-speed meters and very high-speed meters as outlined below.
Case Study Example:
The data below is from one talent-identified athlete in the Women's National Talent Squad (WNTS) playing across the WAIL and Celtic Challenge. To outline the gap between domestic and high-performance rugby, the following GPS data shows the gradual layering of structured training as a talent-identified player progressed from club training, into the WNTS programme and Celtic Challenge competition. The data is taken from key WAIL weeks or Celtic Challenge weeks.
A typical club training structure for this player involves two rugby training sessions per week and one match on the weekend. The data below illustrates the Zone 4 – Zone 6 meters achieved within the WAIL training week. The total distance from WAIL demands was 19,659m with 12% of that being at the targeted intensity.
As this athlete participates in the WNTS programme, the weekly structure is elevated by adding a Monday night skills session, a speed session before club training on a Tuesday night, and a conditioning top-up post-club training on a Thursday night. The game day is left unchanged. The new total distance from WAIL and WNTS demands was 26,762m with 15% of that being at the targeted intensity.
As the athlete progresses into the Celtic Challenge competition, it is noticeable the match demand is not too dissimilar from a peak WAIL game. However, if the athlete had gone straight from club training to Celtic challenge training, the demand would have been a significant step up. The total distance from Celtic Challenge demands was 21,613m with 17% of that being at the targeted intensity.
Ultimately, going into the next season the goal will be to educate the domestic clubs on how best to increase the on-feet demand during the training week allowing us to impact a wider group of players but also reducing the need to add additional layers of training content to achieve targeted demands. A second priority will be to look deeper into the density of the work completed on feet. We can do this by monitoring the basic frequency of training within a week or distance per minute achieved within a session. A three-day week at club level cannot prepare the athlete for this on-feet demand at a Six Nations camp, irrespective of the work done within the session. The WNTS and Celtic Challenge both task the athlete across four on-feet units within the week, thus bridging the gap towards international demands where six units a week with two sessions in a day is commonplace. A second method of improving the density of training is looking at the distance per minute in session. This is a vital metric that we like to monitor to give insight into the density or work rate of the athlete within certain drills in training or on match day. Often, we find at the club level the ability to hit some of our target metrics does occur, however, it takes much more on-feet time to achieve the same amount of work, e.g. a 90-minute session versus a 75-minute session. As discussed, in the past twelve months we have had a strategy of building the athletes' tolerance to overall on-feet load, particularly at the faster speeds. As an evolution of this strategy, we now need to focus on the density of that work. Can we prepare our athletes to meet not only the absolute workload of a Six Nations camp but also the density of that work completed?
Hopefully, the next twelve-month period will see athletes transitioning through our WNTS pathway and onto international honours with a greater ability to not only survive in the environment but thrive and make significant impacts on team performance.
Background:
Lorna Barry is a UKSCA-accredited strength and conditioning coach (S&C) working with the IRFU in the Women’s National Talent Squads (Munster Region). Previously, Lorna has worked as an S&C for several years, spending two seasons working with Rugby Canadas Men’s 15’s and 7’s programmes where she was S&C on their Sevens World Cup campaign in 2013 and the Commonwealth Games in 2014. More recently Lorna held a rehabilitation role with the Sports Surgery Clinic musculoskeletal team and worked with Swim Ireland at the National Centre of Limerick while she completed her PhD entitled: “An investigation into the relationship between training load and injury/illness surveillance in competitive swimming”. Lorna has a Master of Science (MSc.) in Sports Performance (University of Limerick, 2012) and a BSc. in Sport and Exercise Sciences (University of Limerick, 2005-2009).
Current Role: Athletic Performance coach within the IRFU Women’s Pathways
Research Interests: Elite performance, injury, and illness surveillance.
The role: In my role with the IRFU, I am tasked with developing athletes within the Women’s National Talent Squad (WNTS) to be able to tolerate the demands of the international game. This involves elevating their current training status within the domestic game (college, club rugby) to be able to match the increased demands of the high-performance structures at the international level.
Any advice for anyone interested in a similar role: Exposure to a wide variety of environments is critical to your development as a coach. By working in different sports, with different coaching teams, structures, and organisations you can understand what works well and why. This will help you to develop a diverse coaching toolbox that you can rely on when presented with problem-solving opportunities.