On Wednesday week, November 8, the Irish Sport and Exercise Sciences Association – ISESA for short – will be officially formed and launched in the national sports campus in Abbotstown.

That might not initially sound particularly significant or relevant to you, but actually it is. You know how your local club seems to spend every off-season scrambling in the fog trying to find someone to do the S&C for next year, or a sport psychologist to work with some or all of the lads? Or one of your kids or nieces or nephews is doing or planning to do some sports or exercise course in college but once they leave it seems as if they’re left not so much to their own devices as left on their own?

ISESA will change all that. They’ll provide a list of registered, qualified practitioners in the field you wish to avail of. They’ll offer a community and support for those current – as well as aspiring – practitioners and students and graduates. Its stated vision is “to enhance the health, well-being and performance of individuals through sport and exercise science”, from a kid starting out in sport to maybe an elderly family member like the stroke-recovery patients who thrived under the active ageing programme that Dr Annalouise Muldoon oversaw and will speak about at the launch on Wednesday week. Its mission: to lead, represent and advance the sport and exercise sciences community.

“I think it [the establishment of ISESA] will trickle down all the way to the grassroots,” says its chair Dr Tom Comyns, “because the people who are working with your kids are going to have their skillset improved by people who are supported and mentored and enhanced by this association.” 

It’s fitting that Comyns is the person who has been tasked with, and took on the task of, getting ISESA up and running. All his life he’s been dedicated to trying to get himself or someone else or something else running as quickly and as optimally as possible.

He represented Ireland at the 2000 Sydney Olympics where not only did he take in “the greatest night in athletics history”, being in the house for Cathy Freeman, Michael Johnson and Sonia carving out or underlining their place in history: he ran his own greatest race there to carve out some history of his own. Along with John McAdorey, Gary Ryan and Paul Birzzell, he formed an Irish relay team that ran the 4x100m in 39.26 seconds. Tragically, McAdorey died four years ago with cancer but the national record he and his colleagues ran still stands.

“At the funeral John’s family told us just what a phenomenal, life-changing experience Sydney had been for him,” says Comyns. “And it was the same for me.” 

After retiring through injury in his early 30s, Comyns went back to college. In the 1990s he had graduated from UL, only miles away from his home place of Dooradoyle, with a degree in PE – the Limerick campus, like every other college in the country, hadn’t one in sports science back then. By his retirement it did and so he undertook a degree in motor skill acquisition and then a PhD in strength and conditioning, a term and field very few were familiar with at the time.

For his research, Paul O’Connell and a 17-year-old called Keith Earls were two of his guinea pigs. Their laboratory was the indoor track in UL, and with Earls still being a school-goer, their experiments would start at 7am.

“I needed a bit of convincing to be getting out of bed at that hour to go running,” Earls would admit in his autobiography. “‘I’m fast anyway so why do I need it? You either have speed or you haven’t?’ But Tom convinced me and I’m so glad I did. I was blessed to get that time with him.” 

He’d introduce him to the science and wonders of biomechanics; the importance of ‘form’ and the value of weights and powerlifting and how they’d make someone as explosive as Earls go even faster for longer, right up to the 2023 World Cup. Earls attributes much of his longevity and speed to the six weeks he had of one-on-one sessions with Comyns back in the winter of 2005-2006, and that soon after that, Comyns joined the likes of Aidan O’Connell and Fergal O’Callaghan in the Munster S&C team full-time.

He’d be there for the 2008 Heineken Cup triumph and the 2011 Celtic League victory, specialising in developing their speed and movement, before heading off the following year to Dublin where he’d lecture in DCU and be lead of the Irish Institute of Sport’s S&C provision for Olympians and Paralympians. In 2015 he returned to Limerick where he is still a lecturer in UL and continues to provide S&C support for Tom Barr and Ciara Neville.

He’s seen it all so, or at least a lot. How few sports courses there once were for aspiring sports scientists and how little support there was for athletes, to now where there are so many courses and, with the inception of the Institute of Sport in 2007, so much support for athletes.

“In a way I was very fortunate. That relay team I was part of was well supported by Athletics Ireland. Maeve Kyle, our first-ever female Olympian, was our coach: a remarkable woman, to this day. And we had fabulous coaches in Limerick in Drew and Hayley Harrison. But they were doing it for free, as they still are. And there was no other form of support for us, especially when it came to sport science provision.

“It’s so much better now for the athletes. The supports now are there for Paralympic and Olympic athletes like you would get in [Munster and professional] rugby.” 

That transformation – revolution – has been reflected in medals and records on the national and international stage. But for the bar to continue to rise, there’s a realisation that the scientists and graduates need more support.

The idea of an ISEAS has been floated for years, decades even; that instead of practitioners and graduates applying to a BASES (the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences), there should be an Irish equivalent. But for a variety of reasons it didn’t materialise. And so people like Comyns would seek accreditation from a British or other international body, or if you really wanted to work with Olympic and Paralympic athletes, the Irish Institute of Sport. Many didn’t even bother. Sure who was checking? Or more to the point, who was helping?

Over the past couple of years though not so much a crisis point has been reached as a critical mass. There are now over a hundred – 101 to be exact – higher-education sport and exercise science-related courses delivered each year on the island of Ireland, producing almost 3,000 graduates each year. That means over a five-year period you’ll have about 13,500 graduates coming on stream. But where do they then all go? Is there a way to help them keep their head above water?

In the summer of 2022 Comyns was on a Zoom meeting with Phil Moore, Sport Ireland’s performance support director, and Dr Giles Warrington, the renowned physiologist. And they agreed: it was time for a proper support system and accreditation process for people operating outside the Institute and it should be provided and run by someone other than the Institute.

“It wasn’t even just to improve standards but to provide a community for graduates and service providers in Ireland that will positively impact on their well-being and performance. It’d be somewhere for them to go, to turn to. To provide them with a pathway, mentorships, a voice.” 

First though Comyns had to hear their voices. Everyone’s. And so he made contact with every higher-education institution that runs a sport and exercise science-related course. In September 2022 over 40 heads of academic departments joined him for an online meeting where there was unanimity that an association should be formed – and be independent. “It wasn’t going to be a UL or a DCU thing or even an Institute thing.”

A further in-person all-day brainstorming session in the Sport Ireland conference centre in Abbotstown, attended by various representatives from the national governing bodies as well as academic department heads and experts in the field fleshed out what it might look like.

“One of our first conversations was should we maybe just become a division of BASES but it was quickly decided that wasn’t an option. While we would work with BASES and the newly-formed International Confederation of Sport and Exercise Science Practice (ICSESP), we in Ireland had our uniqueness and identity that needed to be developed.” 

And so now, after a dozen further preparatory meetings, ISESA is ready to launch. It has 10 board members, with both genders equally represented, a rarity in sports governance.

All the major disciplines are represented. Instead of working in silos, performance analysts and sport psychologists and nutritionists and physiologists and skill acquisitions will all be colleagues under the one association, with links to ICSESP.

For SarahJane Cullen, the leading physiologist who is vice-chair, that will be the major appeal of ISESA. It will increase quality assurance but also collegiality.

“I was lucky that both during and after my undergrad in DCU I had a mentor in Giles Warrington. I still use him as a go-to person and mentor whenever I need. But I’m only one of a few people who had a resource like that. So we need a way that people from across the disciplines can be part of a community that can provide mentorships and this knowledge exchange.

“This also allows any graduate or professional who does go abroad to have an accreditation that will be recognised anywhere in the world.” 

At the moment there is no such alignment. To be accredited you’re meant to have served so many hours under the supervision of a mentor, but without a mentor how are you supposed to serve those hours? ISESA aims to have developed a mentorship and accreditation system over the next 18 months.

“In Australia it is mandated by their government that if you are to work in a discipline [in sports science] you need to be accredited,” notes Comyns. “There is no accreditation in Ireland at the moment around sport and exercise science, outside of that Sport Ireland has for high performance providers. For instance I work in S&C but it was UKSCA (United Kingdom Strength and Conditioning Association) where I had to go to get some form of accreditation. So over the next 18 months we intend to establish an accreditation system, and we’re lucky that we have Kate Pumpa in UCD who has just come from Australia and the accreditation process they have there.

“But that has to go along with a mentorship programme so you are guided through the process.” 

They’ve a litany of other plans. A series of online webinars and podcasts. A possible conference for sport and exercise sciences undergrads to present their posters the way MTU Cork during the summer held a seminar for postgrads in the field. A fairs day where graduates and employers and practitioners can network.

The backroom folk now have backup. They’re in a better place for it, and with it and them, so should Irish sport.