Rene Gilmartin's journey to Ipswich Town has been a long one - but the Blues’ head of goalkeeping knows he can’t afford to stand still.
The Irishman’s playing career only ended two years ago but by that point his coaching journey was already more than a decade old, with the 35-year-old setting his sights on life after football almost before he’d left the starting blocks as a young keeper at Walsall.
By his own admission, Gilmartin’s playing career wasn’t a notable one. He played fewer than 150 games over 17 years, moving clubs regularly and operating as a back-up for the vast majority of his time in the game. For much of that time his mind was jumping ahead.
A ‘lack of trust’ in football meant he had already decided to move into coaching at 20, a mindset he admits now was necessary on the one hand but perhaps ‘too pragmatic’ on the other.
But, given where he finds himself right now, he wouldn’t change a thing.
“No, no,” he said bluntly, when asked whether he misses playing. “I didn’t play enough to miss it.
“The reality of my career is that I was never a standout No.1 goalkeeper who played hundreds and hundreds of games, with any real legacy at any club. I didn’t play enough to do that.
“But I probably always saw myself as a coach and never trusted the game when I was younger. I always felt like the end of my contract, which was only ever really one or two years at a time, might be it. I came over from Ireland (to Walsall) at 18 and you just don’t know what’s going to happen – there are so many variables in football and it’s wise to see it that way.
“I was maybe a little too pragmatic, I’d have to be honest about that, instead of going all in (on playing). But where I’m at now I’m really happy and I can’t say it’s all a big mistake.
“It isn’t a ‘woe is me’ story at all because I feel so privileged to have had a 17-year playing career. Being in the game that long takes an awful lot of commitment and effort, but all of that probably opened my eyes to the opportunities in the game I wanted to take.
“I was guided well when I was younger and, when I was at Walsall, I was told to do my coaching badges so I got my UEFA B Licence by the time I was 21. Then from there it rolled on to having really good exposure at a young age to coaching younger goalkeepers, so I knew I really liked it. It was a ‘bit of me’.
“I ended up with Watford in the Premier League as a back-up, learning from some of the best coaches in the world, so did my A Licence while I was at it. Being a back-up goalkeeper means you can benefit from not having the pressure of playing games every week, so you are focused on training.
“I feel like I’m a 35-year-old coach, so maybe a young coach, but not an inexperienced coach. I worked as a player-coach at Colchester at 29 but also coaching in academies during my career.
“There was no question I would become a coach when I finished playing, I just didn’t know when that was going to be.
“Opportunities come out of circumstance. For the manager here (Kieran McKenna), injury ended his playing career and he set off down the coaching path at a young age. For me, the circumstance was being a back-up goalkeeper and being able to learn so much from that.”
When it’s suggested to Gilmartin that the early mindset switch to focus on coaching may have given him security in the game now he has hung up his gloves, he quickly replied: “Who says?
“Football and coaching isn’t like that. It’s not the kind of career where all you need to do is turn up every day and you have a 20-year career.
“If you don’t keep improving and turn up and do your best every day then someone else will take your job. Football demands the best and we are at an elite level where, if your skillset is not progressing you will be found out and you won’t be at a club like Ipswich Town that’s for sure.
“You can’t settle. You can’t get your badges and then settle in for a long career in coaching. You have to be at your best every single day.
“That’s the reality of the game. It doesn’t owe you anything.
“I’m really happy with where I’m at at the moment but I’m definitely not finished. It’s the same philosophy of learning more, studying more and giving the goalkeepers the best coaching they deserve.”
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Gilmartin is approaching his first anniversary in Suffolk, having joined the club at a time of crisis in December 2021.
Last year proved to be an eventful one for the Irishman. He signed on as John McGreal’s assistant manager at Swindon in June, only for the pair to depart without taking charge of a game 24 days later, at a time when the League Two club was undergoing huge change in the boardroom.
At that point the pair, who became close at Colchester, certainly wouldn’t have expected to be leading Ipswich Town just a few months later. But that’s exactly what they did when McGreal took interim charge and brought Gilmartin with him, following Paul Cook’s December sacking.
He said: “I knew Mark Ashton (Town CEO) a lot from when I was playing Bristol City and learnt a lot there from Lee Johnson during my final couple of years as a player, so they knew how I worked and what I was about.
“I went with John to Swindon Town, which didn’t work out, but the trust and bond between myself and John meant that when the opportunity came up to come in here, at a time when the club needed it, it was a no brainer.
“It was with a view to eventually taking on a department lead role with the goalkeeping, which was an obvious thing to look at, but it was a pretty mad time.
“We came in the day before the Charlton game (2-0 loss) and tried to put a team together with some sort of strategy. We did set plays on Subbuteo boards and things like that, just to try and give them some visuals with so little time to work with.
“It was a transitional period for everyone in the team and we tried every formation we could during that period just to try and get something to work. The manager (Kieran McKenna) appreciated that because when he came in he could see different strategies and formations and had been given a good view of a lot of players.
“It was a difficult time but one in which you definitely got an idea of how big the club is and how big the support is, because that game at home to Sunderland (1-1 draw) was a full house with brilliant support.
“That time opened my eyes to the possibilities at this club.”
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After the draw with Sunderland was when Gilmartin first met Kieran McKenna, who was appointed the previous day and had watched from the stands.
“He came into the dressing room after the game and shook everyone’s hand,” he said. “That’s when I met him for the first time.
“You can see he is a top coach and why he’s so highly respected on the training pitch, because his level of detail is fantastic to be around. It’s great to be part of a team of coaches where you are learning every day.
“He’s a breath of fresh air for everyone. If you are a learner and someone who wants to grow then he’s the perfect person to work with, because he wants to grow himself. The level of application and detail he wants is perfect for someone like me.
“He’s very clear in what he wants from his goalkeeper so that makes it easy for someone like me to then go and try to deliver it to him.
“He’s a young man, too, so socially it’s easy for us to get on. We have long trips like Plymouth and Morecambe so we have a lot of time together.
“He’s assured. Definitely assured. And that comes because he is confident in what he studies, delivers and prepares for. The group do the right work on the training pitch and all of his staff know their roles, so he knows going into games that the players are as prepared as they can be.
“From that comes a calmness. You have to feel assured that we are putting out the best team we can.
“You see it up and down the leagues. His manner on the sidelines comes across on the pitch. Players see a calm and assured manager who wants to do the right things, being brave in possession, and they are going to want to be like that on the pitch.
“If they see a manager who is tense and shouting at the officials, not conducting himself the right way, then it will show on the pitch.”
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You don’t have to spend too long in Gilmartin’s company to realise just why he fits the Ipswich Town puzzle so well.
There’s a sophistication about the football Ipswich produce on a Saturday afternoon or Tuesday evening which is clearly born at the Blues’ Playford Road training base, where hour after hour of work both on the grass and in the analysis room have helped put Town in the thick of the League One promotion race.
To a man, Ipswich’s players have all discussed how former Manchester United assistant McKenna provides a level of detail they have not known during their careers.
The same is surely true for the Ipswich goalkeepers.
“The game is analysis,” Gilmartin said. “That’s where the game is now.
“You have to know what is going on and you have to take the time to look at games, look at the opposition and study what other teams are doing.
“That’s what becoming a better coach is – spending time in front of the screen. You have an unbelievable amount of footage now from different angles. It broadens your horizons and helps you then project them to Christian (Walton) or the rest of the team.
“If you use it and then present it well it can be very powerful.”
The days of goalkeepers spending their training days simply having shots fired at them or crosses floated in the air for them to catch are long-gone.
Gilmartin spends much more time working on an iPad or a laptop than he does on the training field.
“Pre-game we have videos with graphics on to present different scenarios and predict things that will come up from the opposition,” Gilmartin said, showing just how detailed Town’s goalkeeping sessions are.
“I present that to the goalkeepers.
“Something I am quite big on is something I would probably call ‘live review’. It’s basically having an iPad with us in training when needed so we can debrief straight away. If you are working on an action with a goalkeeper they can look at themselves immediately, on the training field, to then help coach those principles there and then.
“Otherwise you are taking a video, bringing it in, putting it on a laptop, me taking a look and then showing him the video before the next day, maybe, having a chance to look at that one action.
“That one came from Chinese divers at the Olympics. I saw them looking at a big projection of the dive they had literally just done after they had swum to the side of the pool. I thought ‘that’s brilliant, how can I bring that into goalkeeping?’
“We did it and we use it here now. The younger goalkeepers especially benefit from it with technical pointers. It’s just quicker and faster.
“Whether we progress that even further, I don’t know. We have a golf buggy on the training ground with a huge big screen on it. That could be used as well because a lot of this generation are visual learners who want to learn that way.
“Sometimes sending clips on phones is more beneficial than dragging people into meetings. I’ll put things together with graphics on it so they can look in their own time, which we would then discuss and go over in training.
“You can’t be sure that certain scenarios are going to happen but you can prepare for certain things. For a goalkeeper to feel they are prepared as possible for games is very important to me.”
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Gilmartin’s responsibility doesn’t end with his goalkeepers, though.
“I don’t think you can only see yourself as a goalkeeper coach if you want to survive in the game,” he said.
“There is a need for more than just someone who goes over to the corner of the training ground and kicks balls at goalkeepers in the morning. You have to see yourself as a coach who specialises in goalkeeping. You specialise there and help them prepare best for the game but there are other roles you may have to pick up.
“Set-pieces is one for me. I look after the defensive set-pieces, which are huge in the league every year. The teams at the top end of the division are the ones who concede less and score more and set plays.
“That takes up a lot of my time as well, making sure we’re solid in that regard. As a team of coaches you are never on your own doing these things, it’s a collective effort to make sure we’re the best at set plays.
“It’s a great environment to work in and that comes from the top down.
“The manager has instilled that into the whole building, from the staff to the players to the kitchen staff and everyone here. There’s a big group of people working here every day with a collective effort for the end goal of promotion.”
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