No competition for CB positions!!

[Ahlethimoutwithit]

Well Well?
No competition for Pat Teehan as CB chairman (going into 5th year), and Tommy Byrne will only run for Secretary if Martin Boland (think this is 5th and last year also) stands down.
Amazing with all the anger around the place at the moment over the performance of County teams, (especially underage) and the delay in appointing County Managers and PT will return unopposed.
Just goes to show, we have what we deserve, pure apathy amongst the clubs at the moment. However, its understandable though, who in their right mind would put themselves forward for the amount of abuse you have to take!!
There needs to be a real drive to educate and develop club officials, and I would also suggest some class of remuneration for Chairman & Treasurer,(think Secretary position is becoming a full time role) get the right men/(women!!) in there and start some proper leadership, and start to encourage some initiative around the county! A percentage of the money wasted on club trainers in the county would go a long way in this regard.

[timber]

Yes the whole thing needs to be freshened up. I do not like knocking these people as they have given their free time to look after Offaly GAA. But if I am to call it as it is then I would have to say that the CB needs a good shake up.

Teehan to me is too stubborn for the role. And when you have stubborn people with power it can be disastrous. He is the main man in there and he let the selection of both management teams become a complete farce. It was terribly handled and has caused alot of frustration in the county particularly for the players.

Let's not forget that there is no love lost between our county board and the hurlers. Any player I chat to seems only happy to get a dig at the board. There is a bitterness still there between the board and our county players.

I was just reading last week about Shamrocks request to stay in senior football after Rhode winning the intermediate and as a result nobody gaining promotion. This appears to have also been badly dealth with. Not the fact that Pat Teehan turned down the request fairly bluntly but that he then stated that nobody would be relegated next year. Personally I am all for if your relegated then that's it and in fairness to shamrocks they appear to have made a plea and when it was turned down they let it go and accepted the decision. But Pat Teehan and the board then made the ridiculous decision to say that nobody would be relegated next year. it was interesting to read that a number of delegates tried to make Teehan see sense. But he yet again was very stubborn in dealing with it, common sense did not prevail again and the result is uneven numbers in senior and intermediate football next year and some dead rubber games with no relegation taking place. I am sure Shamrocks should feel the decision was a bit personal when they made the announcement that nobody would be relegated next year.

The problem is there is very little interest in these roles on the CB. It would be great to see some intelligent, younger (recently retired players) people get involved and re-energise the whole thing. At the moment its faulty towers in there.

[Ahlethimoutwithit]

The problem with a lot of the younger brigade is that many are under pressure trying to hold down jobs to get involved. The other issue is that it is very political, and you have to be in the old boys club. However the big issue is the quality of delegates going to the meetings, whether you like him or not Mick Sheridan gets stuck in and challenges the executive at meetings, too many lads are going in there and not asking questions.
I would say the opposite with Teehan and that the farce around the County managers jobs were arising from him not sticking to his guns regarding the size of the committees. But in fairness the relegation situation is an example of inconsistency.
There is little response here to this, and unless a lot of ye guys with opinions get involved with clubs then the same people will continue to represent us!

Perfect example is the clamour for Senior teams, the guys who want this wont go to club AGMs and bring up the issue, they are happy to run doen their clubs efforts in the background. If they formulated decent proposals as to how this could be down and put it before the clubs then maybe they could get the ball rolling.

[Lone Shark]

I'm loathe to comment too much on this since I would be the perfect example of somebody who has criticised before but yet wasn't in a position to try and change things from within. However I wouldn't get distracted by comments like "Old boys club" - anybody who wants in would find it surprisingly easy to get involved. There are a lot of people on that county board that would walk away very quickly if there were people waiting there to step in. Don't be put off by anything like that.

[timber]

I really do hope some new faces step up. The current board is really doing GAA in the county alot of harm.

Has anybody any potential candidates in mind that might have some interested in getting involved?

In fairness to the likes of Mick Sheridan, they make it clear to Pat Teehan he is making a bad call but he will not listen. How is it that the current board are so incompetent.

[Plain of the Herbs]

Great craic in the Tribune this week. How in the name of God would anyone be €12k better off when they incur a deficit of €69k in a year as opposed to a deficit of €81k the year before? That sounds like something the Department of Finance would come up with. They shouldn’t be let count money, whoever they are . . .

From this week’s Tribune:-

Overall both income and expenditure has dropped with a deficit still the outcome at the final figure but it has to be said that it is some €12,000 better off, the deficit down from €81,705 in 2010 to €69,178 this year. Expenditure was down from €1,111,597 to €1,007,424, while income dropped from €1,029,892 to €938,246.

[bracknaghboy]

Jaysus if I had known the county board was dealing with figures over a million quid I might have thrown my aul hat into the ring for CB position

[llkj]

That's the type of positive attitude we need in this country. We are not 69K worse off than we were last year, we are 12K less worse off at the end of this financial year, than we were at the end of the year before that...that's a good thing, right?

I won't be able to get the paper this week, but does anyone know if the CB publish a copy of all accounts online anywhere?

[durra1]

Notwithstanding the fiascos of this and previous years, it has to be said that if there are no alternatives coming forward to take on the burdens of administration and time , it’s hard to be too critical of those who remain in what are voluntary positions.

Talking in general terms and not just about the OCB , CB positions are becoming thankless because of the sinking reputation of CB membership. This is part of their own doing and part of the high profile player-board disputes like our own and in Cork where players invariably get the support of the people.

CB membership is straying towards ‘membership of FF’ territory. The success stories of well-managed county boards rarely get the credit they deserve from the players and coaching staff. KK and recently Dublin being the possible exceptions. It reminds me sometimes of the link between old-world horse racing aficionados and the betting industry. The relationship is totally interdependent and one won’t survive without the other but yet there is mutual mistrust and a lack of acknowledgement of the contributions of the other to the common goal.

Remember you’re dealing with people who are by and large, are simply not qualified to deal with the modern day requirements of organisational management , who don’t have the PR skills to deal with the glare of the multimedia or crisis management. In terms of media reporting alone, there are far higher accountability standards that there were in, say, the nineties and before.

On the issue of cost - surely there’s some well-placed numerically minded Offaly Gael in the private sector who could pour over all of these figures. Tom Mangan would surely find one any Friday night in Doheny and Nesbitts! Income of €938,246 sounds quite healthy given what’s going on in the country. Any dual county with the proliferation of teams must surely be feeling the pinch and perhaps priority teams need to be earmarked.

I must say I’m in favour of separate Boards for each code. In fact I’d like to see a good debate on the merits and demerits of this on the forum.

[Bord na Mona man]

Looking at the structure of the board, I would say it is fairly outdated.
You have some ceremonial but meaningless positions, but the actual work will fall on a small number of individuals.
What you get is a group of people overworked on administrative slog and with very little opportunity for strategic or forward planning.

The nature of work has changed since these sort of structures were first thought out.
As I raised before, there is one solitary PRO when we now have an explosion in communication and information outlets.
Not to mention the lack of dedicated marketing and promotional positions.

If you had an organisation with a million euro turnover, needing to win the hearts and minds of the public to survive, you couldn't afford to neglect these promotional aspects.

I would guess that new blood would be welcome, but I doubt there is a queue forming.
Judging by the reports I occasionally in the papers, most of the club delegates who pipe up at the meetings are more interested in kicking up about their own petty parochial agendas than actually trying to better how things are done in the county.