The Standards Night

Before a single tactic, the group decides who it is — three standards chosen by the players, sealed the same night with football.

Gaelic football
Whole club
75 min
15–40 players (run per squad, or mix squads for the full effect)
2 coaches
Effort 2/5
One third of a pitch, plus a corner for the board
culture
standards
team building
preseason
club night

The PitchPlans coaching teamGAA Award 1 & 2 coaches

Kit: 8 footballs, 24 cones, 20 bibs, a flipchart or whiteboard from the clubhouse, markers, tape

Warm-up10 min

Mixer Grids

Setup: Three 20×20m grids. As players arrive, deal them into grids like cards — split the cliques, mix the ages if squads are combined, separate the school friends. A ball per grid.

How it works: Pass-and-move keep-ball, but the receiver must be named before every pass — and you can't name the same player twice in a row, so the quiet lad in the corner gets found. Every two minutes, two players from each grid rotate to another grid and the naming starts over. Finish with a whole-group circle pass: one ball, then two, then three flying across the circle, names called first, laughing allowed and likely. Simple on the legs, deliberately hard on the comfort zones.

What to say

“Name first, pass second — no name, no ball.”
“Find the fella you haven't passed to yet.”
“New grid, new names — ask, don't guess.”

Easier

Slow the rotation; let pairs move grids together so nobody lands alone.

Harder

Receiver must return a fact about the passer learned tonight before play continues.

Activity15 min

Three Words

Setup: Pods of four or five sitting on cones in a wide arc around the flipchart, mixed exactly as the grids left them. One marker per pod, a coach floating without steering.

How it works: Each pod gets one question: what are the three standards this group will hold every night — training, matches, the WhatsApp group, all of it. Five minutes to argue it out; every word must be something you can SEE a player do, not a poster word — 'first to help up a teammate' beats 'respect'. Each pod sends one speaker to pitch their three at the board, thirty seconds a pitch. Then everyone votes with their feet: stand beside the written standard you'd defend to a teammate who broke it. The three biggest crowds become the squad's standards. Coach writes, players decide.

What to say

“Words you can see — what would a stranger watching us notice?”
“Every voice in the pod before the marker moves.”
“Vote for the one YOU'll be held to, not the nicest sounding one.”

Easier

Offer a starter menu of eight visible standards on the board and let pods add, cut and vote.

Harder

Each pod must also name the cost: what the group does the first time a standard is broken — and vote that too.

Activity20 min

The Standards Game

Setup: A 50×35m pitch, gate goals, two teams in bibs. The three voted standards written large on the board, turned to face the pitch.

How it works: A normal game — except the standards are now live match rules with live rewards, invented on the spot with the players before throw-in. Examples from clubs that run this: if the standard is 'first to help a teammate up', every pick-up of a fallen player earns a free kick-out; if it's 'we talk, we don't moan', only captains speak to the referee-coach and any moan flips possession; if it's 'work back', a turnover won inside your own half counts as a score. Freeze the game whenever a standard shows up brilliantly, name the player, point at the board, play on. The point lands by itself: standards aren't the poster, they're the game.

What to say

“Catch them living the standard — freeze, name it, play on.”
“Let the players police it before you do.”
“Rewards, not punishments, on night one.”

Easier

One standard live at a time, rotating each third of the game.

Harder

Players referee it themselves entirely; coaches only track scores from the sideline.

The rest of this session is free — along with 3 more this week.

PitchPlans coaching team

Free on PitchPlans — new sessions weekly.