Lifetime achievement award for Tipperary's Paudie Butler

Congratulations to Drom & Inch’s Paudie Butler who was recently awarded with a lifetime achievement award for his outstanding work in the area of coaching and player development.

The impact Paudie Butler has had on hurling and camogie coaching was fittingly recognised this week when he was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2022 GAA Coaching Conference.

As a teacher and then head-master in his local primary school in Inch, Tipperary, Paudie quickly earned a reputation for being a very innovative and successful coach with both the school and his club, Drom-Inch.

Paudie became the National Hurling Director in 2005 and continued in this role until 2010 where he travelled the length and breadth of the country delivering hurling workshops/coaching courses/seminars to hurling coaches at all age levels.

It was in this in role that Paudie excelled and he certainly had a huge influence on any hurling coach that he engaged with during this time. Paudie brought a huge enthusiasm to every session that he attended.

Whether it was a delivering a module of a coaching course in Armagh, a fundamental movement practical session in Offaly, or a session with development coaches in Cork, Paudie was always able to relate to the group he had in front of him. He spoke about their players, their club and their county. This gave the coaches that attended a great sense of how important a role they were playing in the development of the games in their own community.

His ability to get his message across in a clear and concise manner helped coaches to understand their own role as coaches. Paudie also challenged the coaches to think about how they coached the game, but more importantly how to see the players as people and how to relate to them.

When the GAA commenced training its own Tutors to deliver their Coach Education programme Paudie was one of the first to be up-skilled into the Master Tutor or Tutor Trainer role. Paudie delivered many a course to new tutors and was now influencing coaching in a different way in that the tutors he was up-skilling would pass on some of the traits, skills and knowledge to the coaches that they would meet on the courses.

Paudie continuously expressed to tutors the importance of building a relationship with the course participants rather than just imparting knowledge, identifying that course attendants were people who came from different backgrounds from parents to past players to volunteers who wanted to help their local club.

Paudie continues to have a huge influence on how we coach our games. His willingness to continue to learn himself has shown to coaches and tutors the importance of seeking knowledge and applying it to your coaching session and courses.

A great clubman with Drom-Inch, Paudie alongside his brothers was a lynchpin in the very successful senior team back through the years. He played football for Tipperary too and has been a selector at minor and u-21 level with Tipp as well as coaching the Laois senior hurling team for a spell. However, at club level Paudie has taken all teams from juveniles right up to senior and has had a major hand in the success of the club across the grades.