Kilcoo man Ryan Devlin has been appointed as Arsenal’s Physical Performance Coach following an incredible ten-year journey
KILCOO native Ryan Devlin says he’s “absolutely chomping at the bit” after starting a new job as Arsenal’s first team Physical Performance Coach last week.
The former St Colman’s College student has been on an incredible journey since graduating from Liverpool John Moores University with a BSC in Sport and Exercise Science and a Master’s degree in Strength and Conditioning.
Ryan completed internships with Ireland Women’s Hockey and Ulster Rugby, before landing his first role as a strength and conditioning coach at EFL League Two side Crewe Alexandra.
He then went on to work as Lead Academy Sports Scientist at Sheffield Wednesday before joining Hull City as First Team Strength and Conditioning Coach.
The former Kilcoo minor player’s big break came in 2023 when he joined Premier League side Aston Villa as their Lead Academy Sports Scientist.
He’s worked with players like Tom Huddlestone, Keane Lewis-Potter, Douglas Luiz, Alex Moreno and Leander Dendoncker – now he’ll be assisting Mikel Arteta as a member of the Spaniard’s backroom staff, with The Gunners hoping to mount a charge for the Premier League title this season.
A keen Gaelic football and soccer player as a youngster, Ryan featured for Kilcoo’s U-16 and minor teams.
Sport runs in the family – Ryan’s dad, Colm, is a former Kilcoo player and a member of Murlough Athletics Club, while mum Majella regularly runs half marathons.
His decision to pursue sports science as a career was influenced by his former PE teacher at St Colman’s College.
“Declan Mussen was my PE teacher, so I was influenced by him and his love of physical development and how the body operates.
“Declan was very passionate and probably helped persuade me to go down that route,” Ryan said.
Although the 30-year-old has now reached the glamourous heights of the Premier League, it hasn’t all been plain sailing.
In 2018, Ryan moved back home from Liverpool after graduating and found himself working in Costa Coffee for three months, before eventually landing a part-time role at Crewe.
“The way this industry works, there’s way more people than there are jobs, so in order to get the role, you have to stand out and be willing to go above and beyond.
“You have to have a true passion for it, you have to be obsessed.
“I spent about 18 months at Crewe, working two to three days a week for £80 a week and part time at a bar.
“It was very much about working with the players day to day, and taking an interest, I was very much the assistant and errand boy, put it like that,” Ryan explained.
After his stint at Crewe, Ryan moved into his first full-time role at Sheffield Wednesday as their Lead Academy Sports Scientist, working with the club’s U-18 and U-21 players and liaising with managers like Tony Pulis and Gary Monk.
His next destination was Hull City – a move which had a big impact on his career, as it allowed him to craft his skills as a strength and conditioning coach.
“I ended up taking a lot of the work on the grass with injured players – mid-to-end stage rehab, helping injured players back to fitness.
“I was also leading on the preparation side of things at Hull – so we prepared players based on the type of training session they were doing on the day.
“For example, if the players were doing a training session that was highly focused on acceleration and deceleration with a lot of breaking, twisting and turning, we will prepare specific parts of the body – knees, quads, things like that, to make sure they can tolerate the load on the grass and feel good going into the session.
“That period of time at Hull was when I learnt most of my craft, that’s when I homed in on my own personal philosophy, if you want to call it that.”
Then came Ryan’s breakthrough career moment, when he landed a job in the Premier League with Aston Villa.
Prior to taking the Head of Athletic Development role at Villa Park, Ryan spent the summer of 2023 travelling across the USA, spending time with Wayne Rooney, who was manager of DC United at the time, while also visiting Pittsburgh University and the Orlando City SC football team.
He also met with Jeff Moyer, a biomechanics specialist in speed training who has worked with multiple NFL athletes.
This trip was an important one for the Liverpool John Moores University graduate, as it helped to broaden his leadership skills and allowed him to gain a fresh perspective on physical preparation.
“I wanted to get an eye for different things and see things through a different lens, so I could bring something else to the table.
“I had never done a big travelling trip ever, I wanted to see some different places, and I’ve always been fascinated by how America does s and c and performance.
“It was just about opening up as much knowledge as I could and seeing different environments.
“There’s things I learned on that trip that I use to this day.”
Ryan worked with U-21 players and oversaw all the academy sports scientists at Villa.
He also worked closely with Unai Emery’s first team sports science staff and was charged with handling the physical performance data of first team players who were loaned out to other clubs.
Ryan started his job at English giants Arsenal last week, following an extensive interview process and a ten-minute phone call with manager Mikel Arteta that secured the position.
He’ll be working with the first team players at The Emirates on a regular basis, which will bring new challenges compared to the academy roles he’s been accustomed to.
“I’m going into an environment where the players are seasoned pros – I’m not going to go in and say, ‘you need to go and do back squats’, that’s not the way this industry works.
“Strength and conditioning in books is much different to strength and conditioning in reality, especially when you’re dealing with individual players and their preferences in terms of what they like to do.
“Those (Arsenal) players’ knowledge of s and c is based off their own experience.
“If I’m working with a 33-year-old that had had 12-13 years’ experience in s and c, versus a youth athlete coming through the ranks – they have different expectations.”
Reflecting on his career path to date, the Kilcoo man believes sheer hard work has got him to this point.
“An s and c coach needs to be a high performing individual, they need to be diligent – it’s intense and it’s hard work.
“I went to New York after my first year at university to play Gaelic football for a summer, but every summer since then has been spent getting work experience, I’ve given up a lot of summers just coaching as much as I can, which has aided me, but I’ve sacrificed a lot.
“You’re working unsociable hours, schedules are dictated by the team – if the manager says you’re working ten days in a row, you’re working ten days in a row.”
Ryan was able to offer some interesting insights into the world of sports science.
Personal relationships with players are vital.
“You can offer any s and c programme but if you don’t have a relationship with a player, you’re done, because they won’t buy in to what you want them to do.
“First of all, you have to have knowledge. You have to explain to a player why they’re doing something, but you also have to have knowledge of everything else that’s going on around the player – what type of training they’re doing on the grass that day, things like that.
“You have to be able to modify, and adapt, be reactive to the environment and take players’ thoughts into consideration,” Ryan explained.
A strength and conditioning coach will never try to advise a player on tactics or ball skills, but a basic level of tactical awareness is important.
“My role is making sure, if called upon, can the players do what is asked on the pitch when necessary, are they injury-free? Are they strong? Are they powerful? It’s all about maximising player performance.
“I never try to coach players on their technical ability in terms of how to position themselves when they receive the ball, how to strike a ball, I’d never go into that level of detail.
“But you do need to understand the positional requirements of the player you’re working with.
“If you’re working with a winger, you need to understand that he sprints more, that he might do curved runs, or checked runs.
“You’ll re-condition a winger differently than you would a centre-half – the drills will look different. When you’re rehabbing a player, you need to rehab them based on the demands of their position.”
The Kilcoo man added that players are now extremely aware of their own physical strengths and weaknesses, and many demand tailored physical programmes.
“The standards of strength and conditioning of players has gone up massively within the past five to ten years since I’ve been involved.
“There’s been a massive influx of technology and the amount of equipment being used, and that has played a massive part in that individualisation element of things.
“A player will have their own thought process on certain things. A player might come and say to you, ‘I hate doing X’ or ‘I feel I need to improve X.’
“Players now want individualised programmes.”
Although the man has left Kilcoo, Kilcoo hasn’t left the man – Ryan helped Sean McDermott’s, a Gaelic team in Birmingham, to a Warwickshire Senior Championship title back in 2023, and he’ll be playing for North London Shamrocks following his move to London.
He trains in the gym three times a week and Ryan’s girlfriend, Catherine, is a personal trainer.
According to Ryan, all strength and conditioning coaches should take an interest in personal fitness.
“My personal philosophy is that all s and c coaches should train, because they need to understand what it’s like to train and then having to go and do a lower body session for example, because that’s what we ask the players to do.
“We should have an understanding of how the body feels after training sessions.”
Speaking recently, after securing his move to Arsenal, Ryan commented: “I’ve always said that I wanted to be standing on the sidelines of a first team squad in the Premier League.
“I’m absolutely chomping at the bit, I can’t wait to get in there and get to know the Arsenal players – I’m really excited to get started.”
