GAA blogs, twitter a/cs etc...

[paddypastit]

I spend a notable portion of my working life online, watching media, following business specific blogs etc. For the last year I've been active on Twitter, again tracking media, political and business figures to stay ahead of work issues. 

For some time the absence of a community of people in those spaces discussing GAA matters has intrigued me.  There is a huge population of interested and very committed people following the games. Are they just not the kind of people that spend time online or is it an age thing or what?

Blog wise there is of course the inimitable http://www.anfearrua.com - "the first and still the best gathering place for GAA content" and there are a few others that I know of such as the http://mayogaablog.com/ and http://blogs.ireland.com/thegaablog/ as well as a few others of a more general nature where the writers have an ongoing interest in gaelic games - http://action81.com/blog/ and http://spailpin.blogspot.com/ . There don't though seem to be that many that are GAA specific

I'm interested to see if there is a community of people that will follow a GAA blog.  With that in mind from the beginning of June last I have set myself the target of running a GAA centric blog. I've called it 'A Tuppence ha'penny worth' - http://gushtystuppencehapenny.wordpress.com.   It is focussed on gaelic football - because I don't know a lot about hurling - and in the last eight weeks, I've managed to keep the content pretty active. That let me say that is THE big challenge - it's all about content.

In terms of the output so far, a lot of it is long winded and 'clunky' - I need to work harder at simplfying the way things are said / written there; I'm not a journalist.  In design terms too, I'm just using an off the shelf  WordPress template - I need to get someone to do a template for me.  However the hard part as mentioned is to create content regularly and I've concentrated all my efforts on doing that.

I've just this weekend lifted the wraps a little bit and taken off the privacy settings.  I have a Twitter a/c connected to the blog - http://twitter.com/paddypastit - and have started to contribute to a few other boards with the Paddypastit handle.

Also if you are aware of others that are active, please post them on here. Also I'd be keen to connect with interested discussion boards and Twitter pages. Now that smartphones are commonplace, instant reactions and comments will be more available and readily accessible to all so I'm interested to see how much can be brought together.

This is part hobby, part social media experiment. Feel free to wade in, pass on, RT or indeed ignore if you please.

[Wee Shea]

Here is a GAA betting blog thing with a couple of contributors including a fella who a lot of you on the board may recognise:

http://starbets.ie/betting/gaa

[paddypastit]

There was also this one http://gaatipster.forumotion.net/ - I had the wrong link before - think there might be some people here on the board that contribute there also.

[paddypastit]

It's a shameless plug and totally Sligo centric but http://wp.me/pKvhf-2q

[Mano]

Very good blog. Interesting analysis of Sligo's campaign. Best of luck with it. Will you be doing an analysis of the Sligo club championship or are you concentrating on the county scene?

Very good trainer also - you kept me in shape for many years in Gonzaga and DCU!!

[Rois]

http://twitter.com/TyroneGAALive

There's the official Tyrone County Board one

[ziggysego]

Greencastle's

http://twitter.com/greencastlegaa

http://www.facebook.com/pages/An-Caislean-Glas-GAA-Tir-Eoghain/102583959787214?ref=ts

[paddypastit]

Very good blog. Interesting analysis of Sligo's campaign. Best of luck with it. Will you be doing an analysis of the Sligo club championship or are you concentrating on the county scene?

Very good trainer also - you kept me in shape for many years in Gonzaga and DCU!!

Mano - thanks... and yes those were great days in Gonzaga and DCU

In the spirirt of the blog, I'm not going to get into matches or performances that I don't actually see and I'm unlikely to see any more than one or two club games - if even that so I won't be looking at the county championship in detail - too far removed unfortunately.

[stephenite]

Willie Joe has a fine Mayo blog up and running, the results archive is the culmination of an amazing amount of work on his part. When there's Mayo issues to be discussed he's there, when there's not however, he is not. This is a key thing - a lot of GAA blogs try to keep talking in the off season, because they feel the need to - this can result in a lot of banal rubbish being thrown up just for the sake of it. WJ will keep his head down if there's nothing to say, the result is that when he says something it's usually worth reading

http://mayogaablog.com/

PS: Good luck with the blog, I'll keep an eye on it.

[paddypastit]

Stephenite - thanks and agree with you about the 'talk for the sake of talk point' and about mayogaa.com Am on a learning curve here but Willie Joe is way ahead of me - can only dream of that. Thanks again

[IolarCoisCuain]

Willie Joe has never won best sports blog at the Irish Blog Awards. It's twice been won by some blog about Liverpool Football Club, which is based in England.

I think that says more about the Irish Blog Awards than it goes about the Mayo GAA Blog. The amount of effort that goes into it is extraordinary, and the archive, going back to the 1950s, is the very definition of a labour of love. There is nothing like it for any other county that I'm aware of. It's a tremendous achievement, and an enormous source of shame for themselves and despair to the nation that the Irish media, both offline and online, don't acknowledge the Mayo GAA blog as the stunning resource that it is.

So I'm saying that it's not too bad, like. It's alright. I suppose.

[deiseach]

So I'm saying that it's not too bad, like. It's alright. I suppose.

[ONeill]

Willie Joe has never won best sports blog at the Irish Blog Awards. It's twice been won by some blog about Liverpool Football Club, which is based in England.

I think that says more about the Irish Blog Awards than it goes about the Mayo GAA Blog. The amount of effort that goes into it is extraordinary, and the archive, going back to the 1950s, is the very definition of a labour of love. There is nothing like it for any other county that I'm aware of. It's a tremendous achievement, and an enormous source of shame for themselves and despair to the nation that the Irish media, both offline and online, don't acknowledge the Mayo GAA blog as the stunning resource that it is.

So I'm saying that it's not too bad, like. It's alright. I suppose.

Arsenal blog.

[IolarCoisCuain]

Willie Joe has never won best sports blog at the Irish Blog Awards. It's twice been won by some blog about Liverpool Football Club, which is based in England.

I think that says more about the Irish Blog Awards than it goes about the Mayo GAA Blog. The amount of effort that goes into it is extraordinary, and the archive, going back to the 1950s, is the very definition of a labour of love. There is nothing like it for any other county that I'm aware of. It's a tremendous achievement, and an enormous source of shame for themselves and despair to the nation that the Irish media, both offline and online, don't acknowledge the Mayo GAA blog as the stunning resource that it is.

So I'm saying that it's not too bad, like. It's alright. I suppose.

Arsenal blog.

I stand corrected O'Neill, cheers. But I still can't see how Willie Joe didn't win. And won't win next time either.

[deiseach]

Willie Joe has never won best sports blog at the Irish Blog Awards. It's twice been won by some blog about Liverpool Football Club, which is based in England.

Arsenal blog.

Is that Arseblog? Man, that guy writes a blockbuster every day