Offaly PRO

[Slieve Bloom Man]

Lads, the county board are looking for nominations for County PRO as they didn't fill the position at convention. So here is an oppurtunity for some lad to put his money where his mouth is and get your club to nominate the position, obviously you have to be a club member. The PRO would be in charge of the county website and be in charge of programmes for matches, along with other things. Plenty of us have given out about the website for ages, so here is an oppurtunity for someone to improve things. But u'd better gert on the case quickly!

[The Magpie]

Hmm. Somebody who's:

a) Good at publishing things
b) Competent with the World Wide Web
c) Experienced at putting together match programmes

There is an obvious candidate around these parts, but I don't know if he has the time

[bracknaghboy]

Over to Lone Shark now...........when are you starting boss?? I think we need someboy like LS in for even a year to set a good standard that could be used as a marker for future PRO's. We have one if not the worst official county websites in the country for starters. I think we all initially think that we wouldn't have the time to be PRO.....lets not kid ourselves its a huge task but its actually easier to do the job correctly than the poor attempts currently being made. The only good thing for the guy or gal coming into the post is that anything they do would be an improvement.

[Bord na Mona man]

Realistically the P.R.O is not a one person job any more.

If you were to treat Offaly GAA as a brand and the county board as the company behind it, you wouldn't put just one person out of a dozen or more employees in charge of communications - Certainly not in the information age.

Keeping fixtures up to date on the website is one aspect of it. At a guess, I'd say there is a lot of dogsbody work involved in the job too. Writing articles, assembling programmes, press releases, team announcements, sending letters etc.

In an ideal world, it should be broken out into different roles like: A communications strategy manager, a content author (writing and communication) and content publisher (multimedia, web, social networking).

[Slieve Bloom Man]

BNM Man
Our previous Secretary/PRO (from the Association) would actually also be an ideal man for the job. Must get onto him. If he can't do it this year, he should definitely consider it in the future.

[Lone Shark]

Realistically the P.R.O is not a one person job any more.

If you were to treat Offaly GAA as a brand and the county board as the company behind it, you wouldn't put just one person out of a dozen or more employees in charge of communications - Certainly not in the information age.

Keeping fixtures up to date on the website is one aspect of it. At a guess, I'd say there is a lot of dogsbody work involved in the job too. Writing articles, assembling programmes, press releases, team announcements, sending letters etc.

In an ideal world, it should be broken out into different roles like: A communications strategy manager, a content author (writing and communication) and content publisher (multimedia, web, social networking).

Pretty much bang on, and not many people realise how much time seemingly small aspects such as team announcements can absorb. The PRO is the one expected to get a county team out to the national media at a certain time each week and while I can't speak for other counties, in Offaly this can involve a huge amount of time chasing managers. Drill that down to the same function for club teams when trying to get teamsheets to championship matches and you begin to see that a huge amount of the job is harassment.

I've obviously got to know Brendan Minnock through dealing with him for the paper and the like and anyone who thinks that simply picking somebody with an interest in Offaly GAA, an ability to write content and an appreciation of the importance of internet communications is a quick fix solution is being very naive because Brendan is all those things to a huge degree and more. The PRO automatically gets the blame if the website doesn't function on the level it should, however there are inputs from a lot of places that need to be delivered for that to happen and right now in Offaly, that isn't the case. I could go into a long discussion about the things that would need to change in order for this job to be done properly cut that would very quickly descend into backbiting, and that's not what we want here.

Another thing to be borne in mind here is that you don't have to have the title to try and improve things. Due to a variety of reasons (trying to get a self employed career started, living in Galway, conflict of interest with the paper and others) I simply could not do this job unless someone turned around tomorrow and handed me a paying 9-5 job, however I've always let it be known that I'm happy to help out by putting a piece together for a programme here and there, and that's the small bit I've done. There are plenty of people out there who could do the same in different aspects, and as anyone who's ever been involved in any committee will tell you, no offer of help ever gets turned down.

I don't envy Pat Teehan in his attempts to get someone to fill this because the absence of a large number of people means that outside of the Leinster Council and Central Council delegate positions, which get all the perks, anyone on the county board executive invariably has a huge workload and feck all people to help out. There's a reason why the positions are almost exclusively filled with public servants or retired individuals - others simply don't have the time, because until things change, it will require 15-20 hours a week. A lot of that is time that will be moderately enjoyable for someone with an interest, but that's still a commitment that not too many people can make.

[GreatDayForTheParish]

Due to a variety of reasons (trying to get a self employed career started, living in Galway, conflict of interest with the paper and others) I simply could not do this job

Sounds like a yes.
When do you start?

[Lone Shark]

It has got lost amidst the somewhat poor results for our county team, but there is still no-one out there stepping forward to take on this task. Obviously I don't hold the moral high ground here since I'm not putting myself on the block either, but I think that this should be borne in mind before any of us get too critical of county board executive members in the future.

Incidentally relative to Bord na Mona man's point above, if anyone out there is lurking with a view to taking it on, I would be quite happy to contribute a meaningful amount of time towards the content side, in case that was a concern. Equally I'm sure there are more posters on here who would be happy to help out with other aspects - we're all (or mostly at least!) Offaly people after all!

Not that ny offer of help from Hesh's Umpire or Old Yeller would be turned down I'm sure if it was to come about!

[Bord na Mona man]

Not that ny offer of help from Hesh's Umpire or Old Yeller would be turned down I'm sure if it was to come about!

The scenes around the county after this is announced!

[bracknaghboy]

lads does anybody have a rough list of the duties that the PRO is expected to carry out in Offaly.

[Lone Shark]

So is that picture on the poster of Hesh or Old Yeller?

[Lone Shark]

lads does anybody have a rough list of the duties that the PRO is expected to carry out in Offaly.

Roughly speaking.....

(1) To manage all communications between teams and and the county board and the press. The vast bulk of this is teams.
(2) To co-ordinate with team managers to get teams on programmes, plus to put together extra material (pictures, articles etc) where it's needed.
(3) To attend county board executive meetings and board meetings, plus to be part of a few sub committees relevant to the role
(4) To look after the website
(5) To put together and promote the awards night
(6) To manage marketing and promotion for games within Offaly - for example the Dublin PRO would have been heavily involved in their "Spring Series" promotion of games in Croke Park.
(7) It's often expected that you would be a team secretary as well, but that's not set in stone I believe.

That's off the top of my head - I presume there is more.

[Bord na Mona man]

So is that picture on the poster of Hesh or Old Yeller?

The march was obviously infiltrated by an anti-Tubber anarchist group!

[Lone Shark]

The march was obviously infiltrated by an anti-Tubber anarchist group!

With a lot of Walsh Island jerseys in the crowd as well. Clearly we've avoided a catastrophe by keeping the two clubs apart in the group stages of the SFC next year....