GAA bid to attract 1,000 tourists

[spuds]

This tourist must of bought his hoodie in Carrolls

[ardal]

"If you go to New York, they'reselling a baseball or ice hockey game depending on the time of year, if you go to Thailand it's kickboxing, if you go to Spain maybe it is bullfighting," he said. "We felt it was exactly the same opportunity here. Our marketing person, Julie Manahan, has spent a lot of time on this. We've got a dedicated programme now to attract tourists coming into the city to go to a match.

Great job Peter. Recently I got a ticket for a bus. the bus was heading towards Planet Reality so I boarded it  Spain has been slowly weening out Bull fighting for quite a few years now, maybe Peter meant to say Mexico. Shouldn't be that hard to get some simplistic and extremely available facts right.

God I pity how the caveman is going to go about this job, but hey a big slap on the shoulder for catching on to what all the "Paddies away" have been doing for years, and trying to do it back in Ireland.

[Bud Wiser]

If my memory serves me correctly did not a certain poster on this board reccomend about two years ago that the GAA should develop a tourist package and sell it along with a suggestion that they should provide some form of music before or between games?

[AZOffaly]

If my memory serves me correctly did not a certain poster on this board reccomend about two years ago that the GAA should develop a tourist package and sell it along with a suggestion that they shoulod provide nsome form of music before or between games?

What lunatic would come up with something like that?? 

[screenexile]

i would be interested to know just how many people are making a full time living out of this 'amateur' organisation....

Every county probably has a full time person or two at this stage and maybe many more if you count in coaches for schools underage etc, then you have the provincial councils, they probably have 4-6 full timers each and Croke Park has a whole wad of people, wouldn't be surprised if 100 people or more are employed by the GAA and I'm not counting managers in that !

But I find it hard to believe there is a full time marketing manager , we just dont seem to be seeing the results of this ?

Are you serious? I'd say the Ulster Council has at least 15-20 people before you even look at coaches that are paid . . . it's probably more like the 50 mark.

[Bogball XV]

Banana Man makes a good point. For example, who conducts the interviews for the DG? From where do they derive this authority? Asking the question doesn't imply that there must be some Masonic cabal pulling the GAA's strings. Not getting an answer, on the other hand . . ..

The posts are advertised in the national press, the interviews are conducted in the first instance by whomever the interviewee will be reporting to, normally with another person in attendance (I presume someone has HR responsibility in there too).  Depending on the level of the post, further interviews may be conducted and you could have the likes of McKenna and Padraig Duffy at them.
There is a separate company called Croke Park Teoranta which runs croke park on behalf of the gaa, it usually this company who the croke park 'team' works for.

[Denn Forever]

There are many ex GAA players who are now big stars.  Let the torist know how important the GAA has been.

No ghosts in spirited volume
01-05-2011 - Eamonn Sweeney

At St Paul's, they have 120 lads training for Gaelic football every week. Their players have won titles at under 12, 14 and 16 and have been visited by Tyrone manager Mickey Harte.

So what's the big deal? Well, St Paul's Academy is in Abbeywood, a hardy part of South London near Charlton Athletic's ground without much of an Irish population. Yet thanks to the efforts of the first- and second-generation Irish teachers at the school, eight of whom coach football, and the talent of the boys themselves, it has become the mightiest footballing nursery in the capital.

Players from St Paul's have been British champions at under 12 and under 14 level with the Dulwich Harps club and last October won their first London under 16 title. "There's a great picture of the two sides together," says teacher, and former Fermanagh player, Niall McCann. "The North London team, they're all white players. Then you have the Dulwich Harps team standing beside them, and all bar three or four of the team are black."

Harps captain in that under 16 final was Ayrton Tansiri, son of a Brazilian mother and a Thai father. Former St Paul's stars include Daniel Uchechi who has played in the under 21 World Cup for Nigeria, Nkenjika Eka, who's currently on a four-year contract with Charlton and Patrick Okugwo Junior, who under his stage name of Tinie Tempah is the biggest star in British hip-hop. Every May, St Paul's tour Fermanagh and Tyrone, which is where they came to the attention of Mickey Harte.

The story of St Paul's is just one of the fascinating tales in the best GAA book I've read for a long time, A Very Different County by Robert Mulhern. Too many GAA books are ghost-written cash-ins which arrive in a haze of publicity before you realise that the latest one has been written according to the same template as all the others. A Very Different County, on the other hand, genuinely breaks new ground. It's a book which feels as though it had to be written, a look at the Association in London through the eyes of those involved.

Mulhern, who I've never met so there's no log-rolling going on here, is a 32-year-old journalist from Naas currently working with that venerable London Irish institution, the Irish Post.

He writes well and intelligently about not just St Paul's but the great London hurling team of 1973 which beat Galway in the All-Ireland quarter-final and ran eventual champions Limerick close in the semi, exile Gerry Rea holding his brother Ned scoreless; about London hurling manager and publican Ambrose Gordon who RTE took to court to stop him supplying pubs with the pirated copies of The Sunday Game which were a lifeline for the likes of myself in eighties London; of Paul Hehir, the London-born star who made the reverse journey and brought Doonbeg to within a seconds of a Munster title and of many other stories worth telling.

Not the least of the author's achievements is his ability to capture the rackety, off-the-cuff, big-hearted flavour of London GAA, something which anyone who ever spent an afternoon at a game in Ruislip will remember with affection.

He's an excellent interviewer and has the confidence to let his protagonists speak for themselves a good deal of the time. My only complaint is that the book, at 164 pages, is too short.

A Very Different County is a great book with a great soul about some great people. Buy it if you get a chance at all.

[Fuzzman]

I have been saying this for years too

It amazed me when I moved down to live in Dublin that quite often there could be a big game on in Croker and lots and lots of people in around the city would not even be aware of it.

I'd be getting the bus into town wearing the jersey and I was amazed by the amount of people asking me "Is there a game on today or Who's playing"
Then it hit me that if you weren't actually a GAA fan then there was nothing advertised around town to show non Gaels that there was a big game on and tickets available.

I met an Italian at a game with his son one time up on the very top of the Cusack. He was totally amazed by the whole set up and how the fans mingled with no crowd trouble. I asked how did he get tickets or know the game was on & he said he just happened to go past the stadium on a tour bus and asked when is the next game on.

I would imagine that every weekend in the summer there would be loads of tourists & even locals living in the city who would go to games if they knew tickets were easy to get.

[muppet]

We need cheerleaders too. Real ones mind.

[ludermor]

I have been saying this for years too

It amazed me when I moved down to live in Dublin that quite often there could be a big game on in Croker and lots and lots of people in around the city would not even be aware of it.

I'd be getting the bus into town wearing the jersey and I was amazed by the amount of people asking me "Is there a game on today or Who's playing"
Then it hit me that if you weren't actually a GAA fan then there was nothing advertised around town to show non Gaels that there was a big game on and tickets available.I met an Italian at a game with his son one time up on the very top of the Cusack. He was totally amazed by the whole set up and how the fans mingled with no crowd trouble. I asked how did he get tickets or know the game was on & he said he just happened to go past the stadium on a tour bus and asked when is the next game on.

I would imagine that every weekend in the summer there would be loads of tourists & even locals living in the city who would go to games if they knew tickets were easy to get.

Do you have to have an interest in the GAA to be a Gael??

[Fuzzman]

Nope