Match Reports on the Internet

[96318104]

Does anybody else find it frustrating that the Tribune,Indo and Express don't publish their match reports of local championship games on the web anymore. Granted the Independent does occasionately update their website but what they place on the web is selective and sporadic. What happened to the Express and the Tribune papers? You can't find them on the web anymore. I remember three or four years ago they regularly updated their websites and it was great to read their previews and reviews when I was abroad or in Dublin. Surely they employ people who have web skills. It's mostly a question of copying and pasting into a specific web template.

I think it's a terrible shame that there is obviously interest held by Offaly people all over the world in reading about how their local club is getting on but the question is : Can anything be done? Is it possible to send petitons or ask these papers why they went offline. I wonder did they just stop because they felt there was no demand?

[OffalyManAway]

Couldn't agree more - I am an "OffalyManAway" and would love to be able to keep up to date on Senior/Intermediate & Junior results and game reports. I've even asked for information from the learned members on this forum but all seem reluctant to provide information (or maybe they dont know ?).

[Seán Boyle Ó Rathallaigh]

I find Offaly is living up to its BMW region status with great aplum. If you look at any other Offical County Website it is a hive of information, Leitrim even have real time up dates of all their matches on their website!

As for Offaly clubs only two have websites worth mentioning for their members to keep updated. Serious work needs doing and maybe its time some younger members to get involved and sort things out!

[Lone Shark]

Leitrim is very much the exception rather than the rule in this regard. Truth be told quality county websites are hard find - even enthusiastic amateur efforts like this one are thin on the ground. To say "any other official county website is a hive of information" is way off the mark. Having had cause to try and get club results around the country for the purposes of odds compilation last year, simply finding sites with up to date senior championship results/draws is feckin no easy task.

Saying "even Leitrim" is particularly unfair, because Leitrim's official county website is probably the best in the country, with the possible exception of Hill 16. For layout and ease of access though Leitrim GAA gets my vote.

Generally the good ones with a good chance of getting good feedback on anything more than how the county team does in the championship are:

rebelgaa
kilkennycats
hill16
premierview
teamtalkmag (tyrone)
downgaa
louthgaa
mayogaa
leitrimgaa
kerrygaa
meathgaa

sheepstealers, laoisgaa, derrygaa, upthedeise, clarehurlers (now AFR), and orchardcounty all do their best, but in truth they have very little other than either enthusiastic/amusing debate (AFR, UTD, Sheepstealers) or the hard work of one guy (Laois/Derry) keeping them going.

Rather than bemoan the lack of one in Offaly, which we would like this site to become, but it will take a lot of time and the willingness of a few others to come on board (volunteers always welcome!!) I'm always amazed by some of the really big counties that have nothing at all - not even a bad attempt at a website. Donegal, Kildare, Wexford, Galway and Antrim would spring to mind as counties with huge GAA followings/player bases in the case of Antrim and they have nothing at all.

[Seán Boyle Ó Rathallaigh]

Fair enough Shark, I was taking a simplistic approach, I didn't mean to belittle Leitrim, I was just trying to highlight the fact that a so called regional county can do a leading job, therefore Offaly has no excuses.

I think you should be put forward at the next County Convention to run the County Site, it will require an financial investment from the board to design the site but I'm sure that won't be a problem..........you could still keep this site going on the site as a sort of fanzine.....In fairness you can't say you won't have the time!

[As Such Ger]

I remember reading somewhere that the GAA have some strategy in mind for their web - which they intend to filter down to club and county levels. I think it involves a standard CMS (Content Management System) for all of the sites which come on board, which would reduce the need for programming skills of any sort to update content and mean that different types of administrators could update different sections of the site. Only problem with that is that if all of the sites have to choose from a standard list of modules (for example a module could be latest news section), then the layout and structure of all the sites would be very similiar. Meaning that design etc of the sites becomes nearly uniform throughout the country...not a very appealing thought

[Lone Shark]

Let's not forget here, that though I tend to have a lot by way of postings etc. on this site, I still wouldn't be the "webmaster" or whatever term you'd like to give it. My ability to ramble on at length is unparallelled, but my ability to design and keep a website is non-existant. That credit must go to Pool Shark, a much more advanced brain technologically than yours truly, luddite in chief.

As regards all sites looking the same, I'd say for something like that is merely a fallback system for clubs/counties that don't really have anyone with the skillset to start from scratch themselves. I wouldn't worry about all sites looking the same - I'd say the only sites that will have that homogenous skin and layout will by sites that simply would not otherwise exist.

[Seán Boyle Ó Rathallaigh]

Check out this link for more information on the GAA's moves towards a CMS (content Management System) for Clubs and Counties

http://www.gaa.ie/page/gaa_websites.html

GAA.ie New Official GAA Sites for County and Club Units


August 2005



Download GAA Website Content Management User Manual (zipped 722KB)

The GAA now has available a Content Management System to provide websites to all official units - provinces, counties, clubs, affiliated units. The task now is to manage the distribution of these sites down to club level officers so that the local club unit may control the content.

The login form for the CMS is available at: Official GAA Website Login

The GAA through its National IT & MIS Committee is planning to offer 'Official GAA Sites' hosted on servers either owned by the GAA or supplied by a GAA technology partner. These sites will be offered alongside the main GAA website portal http://www.gaa.ie


A charging structure is still to be confirmed, but site costs for the relevant unit will typically be significantly less than third-party costs currently being paid by some units.


These new sites will offer the ability to maintain information in a Content Management System (CMS) that in its simplest form allows the publication of news items. The site software will also allow GAA sites to add/maintain/remove pages of content and publish images etc.


This is the first phase of a major GAA initiative to introduce Internet Technologies. It is planned that later phases will introduce:


On-line registrations for club members and a separate system for county draws
Provision for the capture of administrative data for counties and clubs on-line
Provision of fixtures and results
An integrated organisational MIS system
Sites currently available via the CMS include:


http://www.gaa.ie
antrim.gaa.ie
donegal.gaa.ie
scor.gaa.ie
sligo.gaa.ie
waterford.gaa.ie
wexford.gaa.ie

[Treasurer]

Offaly formed an IT committee three years ago (possibly four) - it has met ONCE. Enough said.

[ballymanabroad]

Yeah the quality of websites are crap to say the least. Rather than take a top down approach we should be looking at a bottom up approach. What I have in mind for the Offaly site is a situation where all clubs are responsible for their own content on the site. It works fine for the 'Town Notes' section in all of our local papers and it means that one central person is not chasing down results for all of the clubs every week.

Take a look at http://www.ballycumbergaa.com

My mate designed the site with user interface in mind. Basically I log in and post anything in a format that actually looks like this format and he has all the hard work done on the nuts and bolts end so that it comes out looking sweet when you log on to the site. The beauty of his creation is that you dont need to be an IT person to post anything. You just need a rudimentary knowledge of Word or something similar to be able to post updates. I used to update the site but as you can guess I am no longer in kansas so the auld lad does all that now.

The great thing is that he gets phone calls from the managers of the teams (or he goes to the games and writes his piece) and they tell him what to write on it because everybody wants to see themselves in print.