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GAA to the AFL - What is the switch like?

Eddy Sheeky

Transitions occur regularly across various domains of life. An increasingly common transition within Irish sporting circles in recent times has been the switch of athletes from Gaelic football in Ireland to Australian football in Australia.


Zach Tuohy dons the strips of Geelong

Despite this overall transition growing in popularity over recent years there has been a dearth of research into the topic and this has perhaps coincided with the vast majority of those individuals failing to cope with the transition.


If we break the overall transition down we can see that it consists of three sub transitions:

1. Amateur to professional

2. Cultural

3. Switching sports


Viewing these transitions through Wylleman & Lavallee’s (2004) holistic model of athletic transitions (Figure 1) allowed the formation of four research questions:


· How is the experience of transitioning from amateur to professional?


· What is it like to move to a new country to pursue this career?


· What are the difficulties in learning a new sport so late in development according to Wylleman & Lavallee’s model?


· How do players cope with the transitions?

Figure 1. Wylleman & Lavallee’s (2004) model of career transitions

Six athletes who had made the transition were interviewed about their experiences and from their response three key themes emerged:

1. Motivating Factors

2. Stressors

3. Adapting Factors


These three themes made up of various sub themes where what made up the majority of the experiences these athletes had in their transitions and it was apparent that adapting factors were pivotal in the overall success or failure of these transitions and as such they made up much of the discussion. The sub themes making up adapting factors were:

- Accommodation

- Irish Support Networks

- GAA background

- Mental Toughness

- Age


These sub factors could well be areas worth focusing on building and enhancing for future athletes making the transition in order to increase the likelihood of a successful transition.


Ideally future research would involve more than six participants, but these study does provide a glimpse into what those making the switch perceive as helpful and unhelpful and it’s important we listen to and adhere to their needs where possible.


This blog is based on research I did for my dissertation. Click the link below to read the actual paper and free to reach out if you want to discuss it! Get me via the website here or on eddiesheeky@hotmail.com.




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