He speaks a lot of sense.
Sport is all about confidence. Every game is a confidence game and those who have the most confidence in their own abilities will come out on top.
At the highest level of sport, most players will have the skill set, it’s those who are able to get the most out of themselves who are heard tell of.
Confidence is something that can’t really be trained. It’s within a player. It can come with experience, but it can also come with youth.
Kevin McStay is the manager of a young Roscommon team. He views his main task as instilling confidence in his players. It’s confidence that will rid them of inconsistency, it’s confidence that will bring them to where they want to go.
“We’re managing a very young team. Our average age is 23 or something like that. Inconsistency is one of the things you’re always going to have with youth and young teams. I was just saying the other week if we can get this group to 27 together, it won’t be under my watch, but that maturity would make them a very competitive team,” he said to Colm Parkinson on Thursday’s GAA Hour Show.
At the moment, his team are still showing signs of those mental frailties.
“But when you’re waiting for that, inconsistency is there. We’re working awful hard to get that out of our game, that would be the big comment we’d make after our last two or three league matches, you know, unbeaten away from home and we haven’t won at home. That’s classic inconsistency of a young team.”
It’s wins and experience that will bring this confidence. At the same time, losses and poor performances will bring players down.
“When you’re young, you’re trying to figure out the whole thing, and if your confidence grows with a few big wins, you become a different player.
“But the corallary of that is true too, if you’re confidence is drained you can’t kick it out of your way. That’s the issue for us, we’ve a lot of young confidence players.”
Just like the Kilkenny hurlers, the Dublin footballers at the moment, it’s crucial that players have the confidence to still believe in themselves even when things are going wrong.
“They have to be going well, to get that confidence high. The trick is getting that to the experienced level when confidence is lower, you know how to get through it.”
Often, players try to give off confident vibes but players with a weak mentality will be found out, McStay insists.
“The one type of confidence I hate is flaky confidence, the bluff confidence.Have real confidence in that, ‘I’m in great shape, I’ve trained hard and when we’ve played matches I’ve performed well.’
“Now you’ve real confidence, not that confidence where a goal in the very first minute for the opposition drains everything. That’s no good to anybody.
“It’s okay, we’re four down, we’re nice and steady, we’ll chip away at this and we’ll get there.”
Many believe that overconfidence is a trait in young players, but McStay feels that they are so well aware and so well prepared that it no longer is the case.
“I don’t see much overconfidence in the modern game. I think we all know too much about each other.
Listen to the full interview and much more from The GAA Hour Football Show right here.
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