Un Cambio Es Bueno

[Plain of the Herbs]

So does Offaly GAA have a strategic plan, or doesn't it? Or does it have a 'review', which by implication is an assessment of the current position and is not a strategy for the future.

Buck Face suggests there is something, but also implies that said paper is not in the public domain and is only available by contacting club secretaries.

Monaghan and Carlow (both with smaller populations than Offaly) each have 5 year plans on their websites for all the world to see, as do the Edenderry club. But Offaly's seems to kept in that file marked 'top secret', whatever it is.

[Offalys Future]

Club secretaries who don't know anything about it.

Buck Face seems to have all the answers. It really is the mentality that you have and others the very reason that Offaly is where it is.
There is no strategic plan for Offaly GAA and how we can get back to winning hurling/football minor u-21 and Senior matches never mind Leinster and all-Ireland titles. and there is no transparency.
Its very disappointing even now when we have hit rock bottom and a county board who are so out of their dept won't look for outside help to sort the mess that has been created the past 10 years. I'll leave it there.

[Buck Face]

Not only do the county board look for what you call outside help but they actually use 'outside' help.

But it is no surprise that you are unaware of that also.

[Buck Face]

POTH - I think you'll find that reviews are carried out to make plans.

[Lone Shark]

This is one of those debates where it's easy to see both sides.

On the one hand, it's very populist to come out and say things like "sack the board" and "we need change" without putting forward actual solutions, or suggesting who the people might be to implement this type of change. Equally, I would agree with Buck Face that the correct forum for suggesting changes is through the clubs, rather than creating extra layers of discussion.

However, if there are strategic or visionary documents in place, then I don't think "ask your club secretary" is a fair comment. Put very simply, in any club I've been involved in or close to, the secretary is a very hard-working, beleaguered individual who already has to put in a huge amount of hours every week just to get through the day to day stuff. In an ideal world a club would have a committee and sub committees of over 20 or 30 people with all the tasks well delegated out among those, but that's usually not the case. More often than not the chair, secretary, treasurer and one or two others are working like demons just to keep everything going.

And when it's such hard work simply keeping Ballycrossroads GAA club up and running, keeping the lights on and the bills paid, then things like county strategy go out the window. Asking a secretary to dig through emails and send stuff on is just piling unnecessary work on.


Part of the county board's remit here is to provide leadership, and inherent in that is getting people to buy into what they're doing so people will back them up. I know most of the management committee reasonably well and I know some of them very well. In the main, they would be the first to say that they've done their best, but that they haven't necessarily got the overwhelming faith of the GAA membership in the county behind them, rightly or wrongly. In that scenario, what harm could it do to put their plans out there - say to the Offaly public that this is what we're trying to do, this is where we want to get to, this is how we plan to get there. Then if people can see that, it's so much easier to ask for their help, either in terms of volunteering time, or in terms of financial support, such as the county board lotto. If people can see that we need X amount of extra lotto tickets to fund a particular project, then that's a much easier sell than leaving them with their existing view, which is that it's all going into a black hole labelled "OCP Debt".

In an ideal world, of course the clubs would be the soil from which Offaly's revival as an intercounty force would grow, but this is Ireland, and all politics is local. When you're trying to run a successful club, quite often the county is not your friend, it's the enemy. It's just another bill to be paid, an entity that takes all your best players away and gives nothing back. I really like what they did with the regional forums last year in terms of breaking those barriers down, though in the majority of cases that just became a meeting about the changes to the SFC/IFC. However the truth of the matter is that there are people who would happily get involved with their county, but who aren't as interested in getting involved with their club, for whatever reason. You can say that really shouldn't be the case and you'd be right, but sitting back all smug and correct is no good when Offaly keeps slipping further and further into irrelevance. That's before you get into all those who don't live anywhere between Shinrone and Clonmore any more, people who arguably might have a very valuable perspective since they've seen what happens in other counties.

[Buck Face]

I agree with the crux of all that.

I understand the secretaries are over loaded (and that is part of the problem here). I'm simply trying to direct him to go through the right channels and going to the secretary or reps (as I also suggested) is a good place to start. I don't see anything unfair in that.

Club county board reps need to become a more integral part of the club meetings and for sure the county board can do much better in getting there message out there.

And instead of the county board getting 'people to buy into what they're doing' we need to start getting it to do what the 'people' want it to do. But this can only happen if people, regardless of where they live, go through the right channels.

[Lone Shark]

I agree with the crux of all that.

I understand the secretaries are over loaded (and that is part of the problem here). I'm simply trying to direct him to go through the right channels and going to the secretary or reps (as I also suggested) is a good place to start. I don't see anything unfair in that.

Club county board reps need to become a more integral part of the club meetings and for sure the county board can do much better in getting there message out there.

And instead of the county board getting 'people to buy into what they're doing' we need to start getting it to do what the 'people' want it to do. But this can only happen if people, regardless of where they live, go through the right channels.

There's an element of chicken and egg about all this. In a lot of cases, through no fault of the county board, the "right channels" are blocked. Your average frustrated club member who'd like to pitch in, or put ideas out there, can't be held responsible for the fact that the only people a club can get as county board delegate is a member who invariably has a bit of free time on Tuesday evenings and who in a lot of cases, likes the social element of the gathering in the Tullamore Court Hotel. They don't treat it like a job where they have responsibilities and while they might attend a club committee meeting and relay a rough gist of what's going on that way, the idea of having all the relevant documents that are discussed on file or delving into the minutiae would be a bridge too far. Also, if you're the type of club member who's in a position to bump into the delegate in the pub of a Friday night that's fine, but if you're not, then you don't see this guy and you don't get to talk to him.

Without doubt, clubs have to do better - but in a situation where the average GAA follower in Offaly feels fed up of the whole situation, the atmosphere is not conducive to enticing new volunteers on board. The county board may need to bridge this gap a little bit and communicate with everyone in the county, not just the secretaries who are on the email list. Surely with the website up and running, the scope is there to do that now.

It's not incorrect (or unfair, as you put it) to say that there are correct channels there for people to be part of a revival and that it's down to the clubs to sort themselves out, but it kind of misses the point. Taking that line is the equivalent of shrugging their shoulders and saying that "it's not my problem" when in actual fact the CB should want this input, they should want to be more closely connected to the GAA people in the county and they should want people to feel like they can be part of the solution to our current problems.

[Buck Face]

Surely in this day and age a frustrated club member has more ways of contacting a rep than just meeting him down in the pub?

If they are not representing their clubs and reporting back then they are not fulfilling their role and i understand that many are in the cosy scenario that you paint. But this has to change.

I have not for once said it is just down to the clubs. It is down to everyone from top to bottom.

[manfromdelmonte]

Unless change comes from within an organisation then the prevailing culture within that association will continue and those involved will row against the new changes

Its the same for any
a business
b school
c team
d club

hiring and administrator will be a waste of time unless there is a plan for them to work with, and progress targets to reach

[Buck Face]

...and the plan embraced and enacted upon on this time.

[Offalys Future]

Just to recap:
1.There is a strategic plan for Offaly GAA but nobody on this forum apart from one person has seen it. Its not visible anywhere for anybody to see.
A club secretary who attends county board meetings doesn't have it either.

2. There is an on-going review but its not clear who is doing this and what will be achieved from it.

If an organisation is a mess (which Offaly GAA is at the moment) then any review that takes place should be conducted by a professional external organisation and certainly not by the people who have been part of creating the mess in the first place. No transparency, no leadership and no accountability.

[Buck Face]

The quality of the plans/reviews is not the issue.

Participation and implementation is the key (on both the part of the county board and the clubs).

[Offalys Future]

The quality of the plans/reviews is not the issue.

Participation and implementation is the key (on both the part of the county board and the clubs).

Implementing a badly laid out plan will lead to more failure.

[suckindiesel]

message to offalys future

the gaa is a democracy.

put yourself forward for an executive position at the next agm.

a year on a county executive might be an eye opening experience.

this idea of offering yourself for free for a position is a joke............you may consider yourself an ideal candidate, others could have a different opinion.


if you want to have an imput........use the vehicle of your club delegate at the next county board meeting and work within the existing protocol of developing a future roadmap.

[Buck Face]

Hear hear....

Offaly's Future - how do you know the plan or recent reviews were badly laid out when you weren't even aware of their existence?

The review at the end of 2012 and the recent club health checks were very professional.