Strategic Review of Gaelic Games in Laois 2017

Started by redsetanta, July 07, 2017, 12:14:25 PM

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Don Draper

Quote from: Keyser Söze on October 03, 2017, 10:40:49 PM
Interesting summation.

I don't like your references to the education and employment records of the candidates. Personal opinion.

I wouldn't dismiss O' Neill as "harmless" and I can see him putting up a serious fight. I'd be backing him to win at this point.
Mortimer is a "wheeler dealer" as you say, but I don't think he is as popular as the victory in the Vice Chairman contest might suggest!
Delighted to see the debate start, while it may only be a shower of cranks on the internet, it is no harm for it to be voiced somewhere. I would agree re the education and employment aspect, one of the best we've had in recent years, was a dairy farmer with little of the above. Perhaps the game has changed recently, but there's a lot to be said for street smarts over book smarts on occasion. Brian Allen is a nice man, he's done his time, and is a great volunteer, but he shouldn't be in this race.

clonadmad

Quote from: merman on October 03, 2017, 11:31:27 PM
I'd expect O' Neill to edge out Mortimer to be honest. Doubt he'll be anyway complacent and he'll have his ducks in a row well before it comes to the vote.
Allen will certainly pull votes from the hurling areas and he mightn't be as big an outsider as some think.

The Coaching and Games Development position is also up for election and this, above any other, certainly requires a fresh face, not someone parachuted in after losing out on a loftier position.

The Strategic Review committee are currently meeting clubs; I believe the response from clubs has been somewhere between mixed and poor. Hard to blame individuals as there will be an element of fatigue at this time of the year. The club meetings are a necessary box-ticking exercise but realistically, a lot of the problems/concerns raised will be self-evident and these meetings should just give the committee a greater mandate to try impact some change.

A certain amount of apathy given that similar took place in 2009 and the report is gathering dust somewhere in Parkside.

merman

#32
Quote from: clonadmad on October 04, 2017, 11:53:15 AM
A certain amount of apathy given that similar took place in 2009 and the report is gathering dust somewhere in Parkside.

I'm sure you're right but its still a frustrating excuse. An easy one for a lot of people who are happy to criticize but unwilling to offer anything constructive.

And my own club will be complicit too; plenty of strong opinions but I doubt we'll have even 10 at our meeting next week.

clonadmad

Quote from: merman on October 04, 2017, 12:48:12 PM
Quote from: clonadmad on October 04, 2017, 11:53:15 AM
A certain amount of apathy given that similar took place in 2009 and the report is gathering dust somewhere in Parkside.

I'm sure you're right but its still a frustrating excuse. An easy one for a lot of people who are happy to criticize but unwilling to offer anything constructive.

And my own club will be complicit too; plenty of strong opinions but I doubt we'll have even 10 at our meeting next week.

I know,bit like the lad that complains about the state of the country and doesn't get off his arse to vote.

i know of one meeting in a neighboring club where they had to come up with 5 area's where "we" were doing well and then 5 area's where "we" weren't,kinda limited the scope of the meeting

some clubs and this is only hearsay have kept it very much at the top table and have excluded club committee and the juvenile section from taking part.


("We" being us as a county)

merman

I'd hope they wouldn't limit themselves to 5 areas?
Especially as there are 7 overall headings they're supposed to be focussing on.

Jesus Christ, if people give their time and attend the meetings then everything should be considered.

clonadmad

Quote from: merman on October 04, 2017, 01:17:12 PM
I'd hope they wouldn't limit themselves to 5 areas?
Especially as there are 7 overall headings they're supposed to be focussing on.

Jesus Christ, if people give their time and attend the meetings then everything should be considered.

The meeting was chaired by one of our inter county referees,the person who I spoke to would be very reliable and he thought it was laughable that what we were doing "well" was given nearly as much emphasis as what we weren't doing well.

This guy has a successful company and was wondering had they ever come across the concept of brainstorming,where there is no such thing as a bad idea,everyone has their say and you weren't limited to 5 things you were doing "badly" in order to match up and balance the 5 things you were doing well.


clonadmad

The 7 topics that should be discussed are as follows

Games Development

Games Scheduling and Competition Formats

Volunteers and Officers Support

Infrastructure and Planning

Communications

Funding,Sponsorship and Financial Excellence

Urbanisation,Rural Depopulation and Integration

clonadmad

#37
I'm hearing a lot of clubs out there very unhappy with the performance of our GDA's,it's being brought up in nearly every one of the strategic review fact finding meetings.

Toomanygaels

Quote from: clonadmad on October 08, 2017, 08:52:51 PM
I'm hearing a lot of clubs out there very unhappy with the performance of our GDA's,it's being brought up in nearly every one of the strategic review fact finding meetings.

Yes I also heard a lot of club are not happy with most of the GDA's. I would be in 100% agreement with the clubs. The GDA performance should be Review every year and if they are under performing they should be replaced. To me some of them seem to have a job for life without very little accountability.

clonadmad

I believe some of the feedback coming through is why are we as a county spending over €200k on GDA's every year,given the level of service/support clubs are receiving.

Some wondering aloud would they be better off being scrapped altogether and the money spent better somewhere else.

Zooming around

€200k seems like a huge sum. Are you sure that's correct? Somebody mentioned on a previous thread that they are on €28k and that their wages are half funded by Leinster Council. How many GDAs are there?, 4? If so the figure is about €56k a year. €28k is not a huge salary by any means. There are far bigger problems for clubs right now, like recruiting volunteers and the cost of everything from insurance, hurling balls, training equipment and facilities etc. In our club it's impossible to get anyone involved. Nobody has time. The same few of us are left to do everything. And we're not so bad, we've been very successful underage in recent years. They simply drop them at the gate and let you babysit them. I would like to see the Strategic Review give clubs some really good advice on how to recruit volunteers and on finance. Also, the games program needs to be a lot better. With soccer and rugby the children (and more importantly the parents) know they have a consistent program of game and exactly when the games are on. The county board needs to copy that, not make it up as they go along.

clonadmad

#41
Quote from: Zooming around on October 09, 2017, 02:38:36 PM
€200k seems like a huge sum. Are you sure that's correct? Somebody mentioned on a previous thread that they are on €28k and that their wages are half funded by Leinster Council. How many GDAs are there?, 4? If so the figure is about €56k a year. €28k is not a huge salary by any means. There are far bigger problems for clubs right now, like recruiting volunteers and the cost of everything from insurance, hurling balls, training equipment and facilities etc. In our club it's impossible to get anyone involved. Nobody has time. The same few of us are left to do everything. And we're not so bad, we've been very successful underage in recent years. They simply drop them at the gate and let you babysit them. I would like to see the Strategic Review give clubs some really good advice on how to recruit volunteers and on finance. Also, the games program needs to be a lot better. With soccer and rugby the children (and more importantly the parents) know they have a consistent program of game and exactly when the games are on. The county board needs to copy that, not make it up as they go along.

There's 5 GDA's and when you add in such things as expenses and employers PRSI,Id say the annual spend wouldn't be too far off €200k p.a

I don't know what issue you have with the games program particularly at juvenile and underage,it's laid out at the start of the year in the games book and by and large is adhered to.

Club officials get this book around March every year and every fixture for the year ahead is laid out in it,It's then up to the club to communicate with the parents.

There's many things wrong with the website,the fixtures section isn't one of them.




SCFC

There's five GDA's.

There's around 45 clubs, give or take. There's probably 50 schools or so when you take out the ones that aren't interested?

So, roughly one GDA per 10 schools?

I don't know much about their role but there's 167 days in a primary school year. Plenty of time to get into each willing school. I can't see how a GDA couldn't visit two schools a morning. One from 10.30 to 11.30 or so, another from 1.30 to 2.30 or so.

Instead, from what I'm hearing, they are rarely if ever seen in many schools. It's a pity but someone needs to get into the Coaching Officer role on the County Board and shake things up big time.

Zooming around

Quote from: clonadmad on October 09, 2017, 02:57:18 PM
Quote from: Zooming around on October 09, 2017, 02:38:36 PM
€200k seems like a huge sum. Are you sure that's correct? Somebody mentioned on a previous thread that they are on €28k and that their wages are half funded by Leinster Council. How many GDAs are there?, 4? If so the figure is about €56k a year. €28k is not a huge salary by any means. There are far bigger problems for clubs right now, like recruiting volunteers and the cost of everything from insurance, hurling balls, training equipment and facilities etc. In our club it's impossible to get anyone involved. Nobody has time. The same few of us are left to do everything. And we're not so bad, we've been very successful underage in recent years. They simply drop them at the gate and let you babysit them. I would like to see the Strategic Review give clubs some really good advice on how to recruit volunteers and on finance. Also, the games program needs to be a lot better. With soccer and rugby the children (and more importantly the parents) know they have a consistent program of game and exactly when the games are on. The county board needs to copy that, not make it up as they go along.

There's 5 GDA's and when you add in such things as expenses and employers PRSI,Id say the annual spend wouldn't be too far off €200k p.a

I don't know what issue you have with the games program particularly at juvenile and underage,it's laid out at the start of the year in the games book and by and large is adhered to.

Club officials get this book around March every year and every fixture for the year ahead is laid out in it,It's then up to the club to communicate with the parents.

There's many things wrong with the website,the fixtures section isn't one of them.

Is there 5, I thought it was 4. Fair enough add in the expenses but I still can't see how you would get to anywhere near €200k. Five times €14k plus say €20k in expenses comes to €90k. Are you including the full time secretary's wages in your figure? I'm mainly involved in the hurling side of things in my club and I have to say the GDAs are very good to us in terms of coaching courses, club visits and coaching in the local school. We try to get as many people as possible to go to these courses but as I said earlier nobody is willing to give up the time. I would love to get more help and direction in this area. A lot of our players have also benefited greatly from the coaching and games they get with the Setanta program and the Development Squads.

The fixture booklet is fine. It's the non-adherence to it, postponements and the lack of games at certain age groups that drives me mad. Games get called off for the flimsiest of reasons.

clonadmad

#44
Quote from: Zooming around on October 09, 2017, 04:26:13 PM
Quote from: clonadmad on October 09, 2017, 02:57:18 PM
Quote from: Zooming around on October 09, 2017, 02:38:36 PM
€200k seems like a huge sum. Are you sure that's correct? Somebody mentioned on a previous thread that they are on €28k and that their wages are half funded by Leinster Council. How many GDAs are there?, 4? If so the figure is about €56k a year. €28k is not a huge salary by any means. There are far bigger problems for clubs right now, like recruiting volunteers and the cost of everything from insurance, hurling balls, training equipment and facilities etc. In our club it's impossible to get anyone involved. Nobody has time. The same few of us are left to do everything. And we're not so bad, we've been very successful underage in recent years. They simply drop them at the gate and let you babysit them. I would like to see the Strategic Review give clubs some really good advice on how to recruit volunteers and on finance. Also, the games program needs to be a lot better. With soccer and rugby the children (and more importantly the parents) know they have a consistent program of game and exactly when the games are on. The county board needs to copy that, not make it up as they go along.

There's 5 GDA's and when you add in such things as expenses and employers PRSI,Id say the annual spend wouldn't be too far off €200k p.a

I don't know what issue you have with the games program particularly at juvenile and underage,it's laid out at the start of the year in the games book and by and large is adhered to.

Club officials get this book around March every year and every fixture for the year ahead is laid out in it,It's then up to the club to communicate with the parents.

There's many things wrong with the website,the fixtures section isn't one of them.

Is there 5, I thought it was 4. Fair enough add in the expenses but I still can't see how you would get to anywhere near €200k. Five times €14k plus say €20k in expenses comes to €90k. Are you including the full time secretary's wages in your figure? I'm mainly involved in the hurling side of things in my club and I have to say the GDAs are very good to us in terms of coaching courses, club visits and coaching in the local school. We try to get as many people as possible to go to these courses but as I said earlier nobody is willing to give up the time. I would love to get more help and direction in this area. A lot of our players have also benefited greatly from the coaching and games they get with the Setanta program and the Development Squads.

The fixture booklet is fine. It's the non-adherence to it, postponements and the lack of games at certain age groups that drives me mad. Games get called off for the flimsiest of reasons.


I'd be interested to hear at which juvenile/underage age group there is a lack of games,because at most grades I think we are well stocked with games,I think that area is working well,the year is well laid out in the booklet and mentors have a clear knowledge of the year ahead.

I strongly disagree with you in relation to the impact of the GDA's,I have 3 kids at various school ages and they have never seen a GDA,club visits from them are few and far between.Im not the only one saying this.

I'd be very interested to see a monthly journey for 1 of them,what is their call rate?,what targets are they set every year,does anyone know?