Gaelic football drills for GAA coaches
Every Gaelic football drill GAA Pitch builds sessions from, and how to pick the right ones for your team.
What the library covers
GAA Pitch has 38 gaelic football drills in its core catalogue, and every one of them is built around kick-passing off both feet, winning the high ball, and tackling to dispossess without conceding a free. Each drill carries a pitch diagram showing where players, cones and the ball go, the skills it works on, the equipment you need, and the coaching points worth calling out, usually with an easier and a harder variation.
They are not a PDF to print and work through. GAA Pitch uses them to generate a full training session around your sport, age group and the skills you want to work on, then lays it out on a pitch you can share with your players.
The skills these drills work on
Every drill is tagged, so you can build a session around one skill or mix several. The gaelic football drills in the library currently cover:
- agility: Acceleration, sharp turns and reacting to the break.
- balance: Staying strong through contact and holding body shape in the tackle.
- blocking: Blocking down kicks and closing shooting lanes legally.
- catching: Winning the high ball cleanly, and handling off the ground.
- hand-pass: Fast, accurate hand-passing to move the ball through the lines.
- kicking: Kick-passing off both feet, and shooting from the hand at varied angles.
- lifting: Picking the ball off the ground cleanly and legally at speed.
- soloing: Solo runs and toe-taps at pace, keeping control with a defender tight.
- striking: Striking the ball cleanly off the deck when the kick is on.
- tackling: Dispossessing cleanly, including the collective tackle.
Choosing drills for your age group
The same drill can be right for an U12 team and wrong for a senior one. What changes is the constraint you put on it, not usually the drill itself.
- U6 to U10
- Keep everyone touching the ball. Favour small grids, short queues and plenty of repetition on the basic skill, and treat games as the reward rather than the warm-down.
- U12 to U14
- Start adding a decision. The same skill drill with a defender, a time limit or a second ball teaches players when to use it, not just how.
- U16 to Minor
- Build to game speed. Chain two skills together, keep the numbers uneven so players have to read the space, and finish on something competitive.
- Senior
- Short, sharp and specific. Pick drills that rehearse a pattern you want on Sunday, and keep the volume low enough that quality holds.
Building these into a session
Pick your sport, age group and focus skills and GAA Pitch assembles the session for you, with timings that add up to the length you have the pitch for. The building a session guide walks through it, and sharing and exporting covers getting it to your players.
Browse the drills
The catalogue is free to browse with an account. The library has been curated over time, so the full set of diagrams and coaching points sits behind a free sign-in rather than out in the open. Open the drill library to see a sample, or create a free account to browse them all.
Coaching the other code too? There are hurling drills in the library as well.