David Passmore Archives - The Hockey Site

David Passmore about balancing individual needs vs the needs of a top team

Passmore’s answer is to build playing style on fundamentals rather than copying the senior side’s tactical identity. Every young player should be able to play across two lines, so a future defender learns midfield too, and breaking a line or winning a 1v1 matters more than getting a press exactly right. In training games he gives each player two or three individual objectives instead of asking only what makes the team play better. Watch the full masterclass: A research based approach to talent development.

David Passmore on the different roles of a player in a game and its management

Choosing a captain should be collaborative, he argues, and he borrows Sven-Goran Eriksson’s idea of cultural architects: whoever takes the role has to live the team’s agreed behaviours, not just lift people. Let the squad pick who represents them in a leadership group, then decide the captain from there, or rotate it. Rich Halsworth’s leaderful team is the aim, so nothing collapses when one player is missing. Watch the full masterclass: Changing & developing a culture.

David Passmore on the challenge of getting coaches to work together

Every Ireland age group was doing its own thing: different selection thinking, different names for the same techniques, one team on 4-4-2, another 3-2-3-2, another 4-3-3, so players were confused as they moved up. Alignment came top down with a shared vocabulary, while leaving coaches some autonomy. It cost him good coaches who disagreed, and he warns that lip service is not buy-in. Watch the full masterclass: Changing & developing a culture.

David Passmore on the actual state of Hockey Ireland and its future and challenges

Olympic qualification through the World Series, rather than the top three in Europe, has made the route fairer and the rankings a truer picture. He will not promise consistent medals but thinks both teams can push into the world’s top eight. The harder part now is expectation, holding the relaxed culture in place under it, and keeping players whose careers, four lawyers among the women, pull the other way. Watch the full masterclass: Changing & developing a culture.

David Passmore on the 80:20 rule and applying it to score attemps

His team was the best side between the two 25s and kept losing, because 80 per cent of training time went on the area between the circles rather than inside them. Goals from the men’s Champions Trophy in Breda showed 25 scored within nine yards of the goal, yet most coaches still shoot from the top of the circle. Small sided games gave 21 shots in an 8-a-side against three in 11-a-side. Watch the full masterclass: Changing & developing a culture.

David Passmore on junior planning, Small Sided Games and physical preparation

Ireland’s junior phases came with guidance on how much time to spend playing games and how much on physical work, after finding players were being rushed past things they had not yet got right. Physiologist Aidan McGuinness then measured heart rates and speeds across different game formats. An 8v8 on a full pitch met every fitness criterion, holding players above 85 per cent of their match maximum. Watch the full masterclass: Changing & developing a culture.

David Passmore on creating a strategy and an identity

Building a culture comes down to four or five things, he says: be clear on purpose and goals, be selective about what actually makes the difference, set out the values and behaviours you expect, and then live them yourself as the coach. Culture, on his account, matters more than the technical, tactical or strategic plan. Learn from the All Blacks symbols and mantras without copying them, because durable beliefs take years. Watch the full masterclass: Changing & developing a culture.

David Passmore on creating a balance between being relaxed and feeling the pressure

He dislikes the word sacrifice; being a top athlete is a choice, so players should go out and enjoy it. His under-21s used Gladiator to get relaxed before an England match and were alert in the warm-up, then went 2-0 down in eight minutes with uncharacteristic errors, because nobody had thought about the gap between leaving the coaches and singing the anthem. The senior women shared that moment deliberately. Watch the full masterclass: Changing & developing a culture.

David Passmore on coaching development

Formal courses, in his view, rarely make a better coach: they are not specific to your age group or level, they hand over procedural knowledge about how rather than what or why, and coach developers tend to push their own way of working. What he found does work is mentors, a community of practice with coaching friends, and learning to analyse video properly. Watch the full masterclass: Changing & developing a culture.

David Passmore on beating the relative age theory

Two players on his slide are the same age, one much bigger than the other, which is the selection trap. Gaelic games research in Ireland found a child born in January, February or March is seven times more likely to be picked than one born in October, November or December, simply for being older and having played longer. Know who your older players are and give the younger ones more chance. Watch the full masterclass: Changing & developing a culture.

David Passmore on “Hooked for Life”, long-term development and Small Sided Games

Hooked for Life set out what each phase of a player’s development needs. The youngest play four a side with two goals, which pushed the play sideways and meant almost everyone scored in a round robin, while older juniors play 8v8 across half a pitch each, giving 32 players and four circles instead of 22 and two. Stepping Stones courses gave parent coaches three hours on their age group. Watch the full masterclass: Changing & developing a culture.

David Passmore about the Irish context and the path to success

Irish hockey spans two jurisdictions and two currencies, with a small playing base and, when he arrived, no belief that anything outside the island could be matched. The year before he started, 225,000 euro covered eight national teams against roughly 5 million in Britain. From 2009 the group adopted a no excuses policy: name the problem, then find the way round it. Watch the full masterclass: Changing & developing a culture.

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