The former primary school teacher is highly-respected in his field and has written books such as ‘The Complete Guide to Coaching Gaelic Games’. He is the GAA’s go-to guy on all things coaching, effectively. And has been for many years.

During recent years, however, he has presided over the evolution of the ‘OTú Coaching Model – The Performance from Within’.

‘The OTú Interactive Coaching Model is the latest coaching development in Gaelic Games. The OTú Coaching Model - the O as in oxygen and Tú, Irish for ‘you’ - provides the framework for organizing balanced training programs that enable players to deliver on their true potential,’ is the general phrase offered as a means of definition.

The OTú Coaching Model is centred on the theory that the desire to excel at a chosen sporting discipline has to come from within the player themselves.

However, to understand the concept of the OTú Coaching Model Daly brings people right back to where the term ‘coach’ originated from.

In the 15th century horse-drawn carriages known as ‘kotch’ were made in Kocs in Hungary based on the age-old mechanism of getting people from A to B.

The concept quickly spread and the term ‘coach’ was integrated into the English language.

The official definition for the term ‘coach’ in the contexts of education, executive, organisational and sport is a person who builds competence by assisting and challenging people or players to achieve their potential.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Yet, as a coach you have to provide a pathway to achieving that potential.

However, that isn’t so simple as, in terms of sport specifically, that definition remains lost on many, even now.

Research has shown quality coaching is one of the key aspects of athletic development but the role of the coach is diverse and not fully understood.

Coaching experts are regularly posing the question these days: ‘What is the very latest definition of a coach?’

It is, after all, constantly evolving.

There is still debate in the coaching science literature as to what constitutes expert coaching and also to determine successful and exceptional coaching and how it is acquired.

Therefore, this research shows that coach education has failed to adequately define the coach’s educational role and its function.

Former Cork senior football manager Brian Cuthbert, author on much of the research on current coaching and the evolution of coaching, interestingly said previously one can deduct that coaching effectiveness in Gaelic games is blighted by similar weaknesses in the coaching education system.

And given he is also the current principal of Scoil an Spioraid Naoimh Boys School in Bishopstown on Leeside, his thought-process carries substance.

With these findings Daly came to believe that because of this, elite coaches attach little importance to formal coach education in the development of their knowledge.

Daly explained that the days of coaches controlling and demanding things of their players is gone.

Therefore, the key to success is underpinned by the coach’s capacity to make players understand their role within a unit exercising comprehension and conviction.

When a coach achieves this then confidence, composure, commitment, competitiveness and cohesion within the individual and the group become by-products of approach.

The reason people find it difficult to define the term ‘coach’ essentially comes down to each individual coach’s character or in some cases, lack of character.

Coaching requires bundles of character.

And Daly based his assessment and judgement of character in a coach on whether or not he or she is trustworthy displaying integrity, fairness, honesty and empathy.

“Coaches that have these personal traits will be excellent coaches,” according to Daly.

Within the OTú Coaching Model the key is to improve technical proficiency, tactical prowess and team play, the three T’s, all of which can be improved by simply playing games.

Technical proficiency is defined as the ability to perform the underlying techniques accurately, consistently and at match tempo.

Tactical prowess has to do with the player’s decision-making.

And team play which is the ability to anticipate movements and synchronise who should go where in certain situations.

The only way to truly develop the three T’s is with a ball and in the context of a game as Daly is “not a big believer in drills”, a common concept shared by many coaching experts.

Daly uses a wheel to illustrate how these elements work in tandem, effectively.

The wheel is completed by adding in the physical aspect, the psychological aspect and participant feedback, the three P’s.

Physical fitness is defined as the ability to perform the basic techniques, engage in physical contests and respond to signs, sounds and signals experienced during the game with the least possible expenditure of energy.

Daly refers also to the psychological aspect as mental toughness and participant feedback which he describes as communicating with each player about various aspects of training and what the player feels he orshe needs to work on.

The only way to achieve the ‘perfect performance’ is to merge the three T’s with the three P’s.

Easier said than achieved, obviously, but it is the best means of getting as close to the ‘perfect performance’ as is possible.

“If you understand this model, no matter that code you are coaching, you will be a really good coach and playing games is the best way to develop these,” Daly said.

So now, having worked through the coaching wheel and the player wheel, what is it that joins these up?

According to Daly it is the motivational ethos. Are the players happy and having fun?

For the players to be happy and having fun the coach must propagate the ‘fun do, can do, we do’ concept.

The ‘fun do’ element refers specifically to coaching kids.

Subsequently, at youth level, you can introduce the ‘can do’ element to dovetail with having fun before integrating the ‘we do’, competitive ethos at adult level where team work becomes more prevalent than individual progression.

Coaching capacity, to Daly, depends on knowledge, experience and a willingness to encouraging skill and will through applied lifelong learning.