Time for Serious conversation about Kildare GAA

As the title suggests. And this isn't to run down or belittle anyone who gives their time freely to Kildare GAA.

But it's time to have serious root and branch review of Kildare GAA and the direction it is going in and a vision or plan created for where we want to be and what we want to achieve over the next decade and into the future.

Kevin McStay alluded to something everyone in this county has known for quite some time, administratively we are a joke. And have been for decades .

If we continue to do the same thing over and over, why do we expect different results.

We won both our Leinsters in 1998 and 2000 on the back of having the greatest manager of all time overseeing us and a good crop of players. I'm not saying it was a fluke, but it wasn't planned or by design. It just happened.

Things just don't happen now with the way the GAA has gone, it's professional in all but name . Anyone with their house half decent in order is reaping benefits from it .

What is our 5/10 year plan for our underage set ups. What are their goals. Who is measuring then. Who is reviewing them. Who is accountable to who.

What does our minor and u20 teams at all grades both hurling and football expect to achieve in the next decade.
Are these goals linked to our population, club numbers, playing numbers and location.

What is the 5/10 year plan for our senior team. What do they want to achieve. Are we maximising our marketing potential.
Have we got a S&C coach full time, do we need one?
Nutritionists?
Life style coach?
Doctors
Physios
Back room teams.
If we want to or expect to compete with the top teams, this is what is needed. Otherwise stay at home.

What is the succession plan for Jack O Connor. Also on the back of Kevin McStays article, what was the process in his appointment. Was there transparency ?

Where are we with St Conleths Park upgrade.

Why is Hawkfield's dressing rooms and facilities being allowed go to shit.

What are we going to do different in 2022 that can improve and build on 2021 for everyone. Who is analysing and reviewing our performance on and off the field in 2021 and see where we can improve on all aspects.

Answers on a postcard.

No we don’t have full strength and conditioning coach

Strength and conditioning coach would cost €50,000

Was told today the county board won’t have development panel because cost to much

In kildare strategic plan 2019 - 2023 the hurlers have achieved its targets

Football hasn’t achieved any of targets


The communication from management from u17 to Senior is excellent In kildare hurling



Google. kildare gaa strategic plan 2019 to 2023 well worth a read

This is the nice glossy document referred to: https://kildaregaa.ie/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2018/12/Kildare-GAA-Strategic-Plan-2019-2023.pdf

Unsurprisingly it does not entirely hinge on just the county senior football team. Joe Brolly had an interesting anecdote from his father in a recent article: "All-Irelands are for Kerry and Dublin. The GAA is for all of us." There's loads in there about club development which is where it should be at imo. That's always going to be your building block.

Where it does mention the senior footballers, it mentions reaching the provincial final and Div 1.

Ofc if you think you can do better, I look forward to seeing your name on the list of nominees next convention and I'm sure your nice glossy document will be much more inspirational.

Edit: To add, maybe I'm gone cynical or something but we just don't have the same calibre of "volunteer" as some other counties unfortunately and I'm absolutely sure that playing in a rigged provincial championship that you have no chance of winning has no impact on anything at all.

Srsly though, in that plan. Each club would need a full time paid administrator to do everything that's asked of them. I'm sure getting the quality people in to run clubs is as much an issue as the county board. Both are thankless, time-consuming jobs that only get you abuse.

It is a thankless job and all you do get is abuse. But that’s the same in every county in the country.

Take Roscommon as an example. They’ve the population of approximately two large sized Kildare towns. A point to note is that the majority of the population of Roscommon is over 40 years of age.

Last week alone, they beat Mayo twice underage, and Galway. They’ve won all Ireland’s underage and regularly compete in division 1.

They’ve a favourable record against our seniors too.

What are they doing that we aren’t?

Meath is another case worth looking at. They’ve won two minor provincials in a row, beating Dublin. Yes, we’ve done that. But not for a few years. There’s good mood music coming out of Meath and they appear to be going from strength to strength.

Monaghan. Population less than north Kildare. Serial contenders in Ulster, regulars in division one. Underage, as we’ve seen, constantly competing.

What are they doing that we aren’t?

All of the above have achieved a certain level of consistency that we can only dream of. Why?

In my opinion, I believe it’s down to good board room management. The men and women in the back offices matter. Quality matters.

A positive example of that is Offaly. Duignan comes in (I’m not saying it’s all down to him) Offaly hurlers and footballers start to immediately improve. At all age levels. Why? It’s not Lowry’s money YET.

What are Offaly doing that we aren’t?

Having a plan or report on paper is one thing. Personally, Kildare setting the target of winning an All Ireland at this point is laughable.

What isn’t laughable though is setting a target to have top class facilities. What isn’t laughable is making a commitment that our underage teams reach a standard where provincial titles are attained every 3/5 years. What isn’t laughable is stating that our senior team should be a regular in division 1. And that should be a minimum standard.

If any of county board are reading this players and supporters want modern set up for u17 u20 and Senior teams in Both codes.

Cilldara_2000 wrote:

This is the nice glossy document referred to: https://kildaregaa.ie/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2018/12/Kildare-GAA-Strategic-Plan-2019-2023.pdf

Unsurprisingly it does not entirely hinge on just the county senior football team. Joe Brolly had an interesting anecdote from his father in a recent article: "All-Irelands are for Kerry and Dublin. The GAA is for all of us." There's loads in there about club development which is where it should be at imo. That's always going to be your building block.

Where it does mention the senior footballers, it mentions reaching the provincial final and Div 1.

Ofc if you think you can do better, I look forward to seeing your name on the list of nominees next convention and I'm sure your nice glossy document will be much more inspirational.

Edit: To add, maybe I'm gone cynical or something but we just don't have the same calibre of "volunteer" as some other counties unfortunately and I'm absolutely sure that playing in a rigged provincial championship that you have no chance of winning has no impact on anything at all.

Srsly though, in that plan. Each club would need a full time paid administrator to do everything that's asked of them. I'm sure getting the quality people in to run clubs is as much an issue as the county board. Both are thankless, time-consuming jobs that only get you abuse.

Typical GAA , backward , small town thinking.

"It's a thankless job"
"If you think you could do better"

I remember when McGeeney was voted out, and for my eternal shame my club was one of them that voted against him. It came up at a committee meeting and it wasn't even put to a vote, they were voting him out as they felt he'd won nothing. I left the committee room that night and never again darkened it's door. Similar to what McStay experienced, no process followed. This is endemic in Kildare and until this bullshit is weeded out we will forever be perennial losers.

I would argue that we have every calibre of person in the county of Kildare at our disposal if we had some outside the box thinking . We may not be able to pay a S&C coach €50k a year. But who's to say if that if we approached the right person that to increase their profile and for their love of Kildare GAA that they wouldn't get involved for a much lesser fee.

In every thriving county in the country, the County Senior Hurlers and Footballers men and women are the heartbeat, thats why the gates open every week. Young girls and young lads 7/8/9 year olds want to pull on the county jersey and play in Croke Park. Jimmy Hyland and Paul Cribbin aren't out doing Cúl camps because of Kerry and Dublin. They're out because they are both role models and represent what you can achieve with hard work and dedication to the sport.

You see , if you're into nice glossy documents then maybe you'll find it and any glossy dressed up report inspirational. However nice glossy documents, boardroom talk and the same dribble every year ultimately wins you nothing. Paper has never once refused ink .

I'm am asking this question again. And it really does come back to small things like this. Why is Hawkfield, our so called centre of excellence being allowed go to shit.

What is our succession plan for JOC.

What are we going to do between now and 2022 to improve on 2021.

What went wrong with our 2021 Minor and u20 Footballers and how do we address it for next year.

What went right with out hurlers, and how do we build on it.

How do we grow the county, its brand and appeal. How do we increase our income. Are we managing our spending and is it being spent wisely.

How do we better win the hearts and minds of our underage to change their mentality and make them believe and dream they can win an All Ireland ?

Do we not pay a full time wage for a "Director of operations" to cover all these issues. Maybe that money would be better spent on a full time S&C team because our fitness is not what it should be looking at Sunday.

Completely random idea given the cost of preparing teams: I've never understood why you can't just go to a site and make a donation to a senior team training fund.
Not everyone has the money/wants the hassle of joining a supporters club or buying an expensive raffle ticket. You have to go to the trouble of finding out how to do it, set up a direct debit or fill out a form or whatever you have to do.
If you could instead say "We're competing against teams with more resources than us. Go to Kildaregaa.ie to donate what you can to support Kildare football", especially after a high profile win, people would do it. I know I would. It would cost nothing to set up and if you got 10,000 people to donate a tenner ...

That is a good idea in principle OTB, however I think that a full breakdown of how the money is used should be made available to anybody who sends money. If it is used to pay JOC's expense or if it is used to upgrade facilites in hawkfield are two completely different things and when it comes to money transparency is extremely important.

I remember reading that in mcGuiness book when he was seeking out investment in 2010/2011, only things the investors wanted was guaranteed anonymity and also transparency on how money was spent.

If we donate to a senior team training fund we a 'ring fencing' one team only, probably sends a wrong message out to other teams and in truth will also lead to more money leaving the county.

I was involved with a county team a few years ago and travelled Leinster and further afield for friendlies and all petrol paid for out of my own pocket, I knew this beforehand and had no issue with it. I didn't travel on the bus as I lived outside the county.

Team got a sandwich and a bottle of water on the bus but we knew the circumstances before taking up the role when told there is 'little finance' available.

Ohtoohtobe wrote:

Completely random idea given the cost of preparing teams: I've never understood why you can't just go to a site and make a donation to a senior team training fund.
Not everyone has the money/wants the hassle of joining a supporters club or buying an expensive raffle ticket. You have to go to the trouble of finding out how to do it, set up a direct debit or fill out a form or whatever you have to do.
If you could instead say "We're competing against teams with more resources than us. Go to Kildaregaa.ie to donate what you can to support Kildare football", especially after a high profile win, people would do it. I know I would. It would cost nothing to set up and if you got 10,000 people to donate a tenner ...

roughly kildare spend just 700,000 on team

Kerry ,Dublin and Mayo 3 of this year semi finalists would in top 5 on spending on their team they spend over million



Mayo have spent €2.5 million on team over last 2 seasons


Meath and Cavan have full time strength and conditioning coaches

The current Kerry full strength and conditioning coach join them after 2019 season he work as kildare strength and conditioning coach part time role for 2017 -2019 seasons

FionnMcCool wrote:

Typical GAA , backward , small town thinking.

"It's a thankless job"
"If you think you could do better"

I remember when McGeeney was voted out,  and for my eternal shame my club was one of them that voted against him. It came up at a committee meeting and it wasn't even put to a vote, they were voting him out as they felt he'd won nothing.  I left the committee room that night and never again darkened it's door. Similar to what McStay experienced,  no process followed. This is endemic in Kildare and until this bullshit is weeded out we will forever be perennial losers.

I would argue that we have every calibre of person in the county of Kildare at our disposal if we had some outside the box thinking . We may not be able to pay a S&C coach €50k a year. But who's to say if that if we approached the right person that to increase their profile and for their love of Kildare GAA that they wouldn't get involved for a much lesser fee.

In every thriving county in the country,  the County Senior Hurlers and Footballers men and women are the heartbeat, thats why the gates open every week. Young girls and young lads 7/8/9 year olds want to pull on the county jersey and play in Croke Park. Jimmy Hyland and Paul Cribbin aren't out doing Cúl camps because of Kerry and Dublin. They're out because they are both role models and represent what you can achieve with hard work and dedication to the sport.

You see , if you're into nice glossy documents then maybe you'll find it and any glossy dressed up report inspirational.  However nice glossy documents, boardroom talk and the same dribble every year ultimately wins you nothing. Paper has never once refused ink .

I'm am asking this question again. And it really does come back to small things like this. Why is Hawkfield, our so called centre of excellence being allowed go to shit.

What is our succession plan for JOC.

What are we going to do between now and 2022 to improve on 2021.

What went wrong with our 2021 Minor and u20 Footballers and how do we address it for next year.

What went right with out hurlers,  and how do we build on it.

How do we grow the county, its brand and appeal. How do we increase our income. Are we managing our spending and is it being spent wisely.

How do we better win the hearts and minds of our underage to change their mentality and make them believe and dream they can win an All Ireland ?

You asked what the plan was, I posted the link.

You're all engaging in wishful thinking here. Football is finished. The GAA killed the golden goose. If you think that all we need is a plan and we're going to magically catch up on nearly two decades of massive financial doping along with all the natural advantages they have, you've lost touch with reality.

And ofc everyone's favourite manager is mentioned again.

Very interesting thread.

Something which i think isn't considered enough is how our grassroots are developing players. We can have development squads etc that deal with the 1% of young lads or girls who make them but what about the late bloomers and the lads with limited but very coachable talents that constantly fall through the cracks at club level. Clubs are doing great work and coaching has improved massively in the past 20 years but there are still things we can be doing better. We need more representatives coming to the clubs from the county board and running coaching seminars etc.

One thing I think can be improved upon is the way players are selected for development squads, currently it is done by asking clubs to send a number of players, they then fill out a form, one of which is what position they play. This to me is the incorrect question as what is required of a club player wing back may not be what the county are looking for in that position. A far better question to ask would be what particular skill set(give them a number of skills to chose from) that player has and place them in the trials accordingly.

I know it's not a big deal but like we all knew there was no chance of beating the Dubs meaning that there would be a downer yesterday BUT before the game there could have been something to push for Club Kildare special discount offer for 2022 or some kind of Friends of Kildare GAA thing donation.

We never seem to be able to act on any positives, which in fairness a Leinster Final and Div 1 football is.

We must have been something OK at underage to get those wins but we never seem to bring players through.

I said it to plenty but like during all the pandemic the footballers did nothing positive in terms of fundraising or community, whereas the hurlers at senior and Minor had events.

There is just no real initiative or outside the box thinking around Kildare GAA. The McStay article wasn't a good look either.

What is the CEO/ ops manager role defined as in Kildare?
A sales/ marketing person who would be a base salary plus commission would be good too.

Some of you might not like this opinion but Intercounty GAA has been going for over 120 years and in that time Kildare have done very little. We should know our place in the food chain.

Kerry and Dublin won Intercounty football and will win it for at least the next 5 years. There’s very little interest on my side in senior Intercounty. I was more passionate about Offaly under 20s this year than the senior kildare side because it’s nice to see a team in an open competition break the mould with swashbuckling football.

I’ve GAA in my blood but for entertainment it’s the premier league, PSG and the champions league for me. I’ll come back to GAA when it goes professional and they start amalgamating all counties except Dublin into regions so we can have an exciting watchable format.

To repeat Gaelic Intercounty has told us all its ever going to tell us. The future is the same as the past.

Jesus Caprea, thats certainly an outlook on it... Not one id agree with but you are entitled to your opinion.

I doubt we will ever see counties amalgamated into regions - Not going to happen.

The most likely is a revamp of the championship format (which will appease some in the short term) followed by a Dublin split. This will only happen when the money starts to fall off consistently.

Obviously Covid was an anomaly but Kildare Dublin in the 2009 leinster final had 75k ppl at it, dropped to 67k in 2017 and if doors were opened this year, it would be interesting to see if they would have gotten over 50k ppl. I dont think they would.

Thats an alarming fall off, but its masked by full houses at semi final, final stages and throughout other provinces.

The GAA must be praying for Kerry to topple them this year to keep interest levels alive and kick the can down the road a couple of years.

Flamingo wrote:

I know it's not a big deal but like we all knew there was no chance of beating the Dubs meaning that there would be a downer yesterday BUT before the game there could have been something to push for Club Kildare special discount offer for 2022 or some kind of Friends of Kildare GAA thing donation.

We never seem to be able to act on any positives, which in fairness a Leinster Final and Div 1 football is.

We must have been something OK at underage to get those wins but we never seem to bring players through.

I said it to plenty but like during all the pandemic the footballers did nothing positive in terms of fundraising or community, whereas the hurlers at senior and Minor had events.

There is just no real initiative or outside the box thinking around Kildare GAA. The McStay article wasn't a good look either.

What is the CEO/ ops manager role defined as in Kildare?
A sales/ marketing person who would be a base salary plus commission would be good too.

Agree on this Flamingo. One point in particular that I think could really help Kildare a lot is a development of a strong supporters club and further development of our presence as a 'brand' almost!
To many, following Kildare just is not attractive anymore. Support is waning and has fallen over the past number of years. We had a bit of a spike around the Super 8s and Newbridge or Nowhere. Obviously taking Covid circumstances into consideration, where we are in unprecedented waters, but you can see support has been down.

Club Kildare I feel is a joke. It is far too expensive for most ordinary people in the county, who are already paying for their club membership as well as children's membership. I don't see much benefits of being a member of Club Kildare, in comparison to the benefits that other counties' supporters clubs have. Considering all the games that I do attend (club & county) I probably should be a member. I feel it should be cheaper but expanded in terms of numbers of members, and much more active. The supporters need a voice - if you look at other counties, their supporters clubs are a central breathing element of the county. Yes Club Kildare is central and raises important money, but its like a sideshow, rarely spoken about, an afterthought if you compare how many people are members, with the population of our county, and with club memberships. There are no incentives for juveniles to become involved in Club Kildare - very poor as they are the future of it - there should be a free active juvenile section for the youth of our county.

Overall much more could be done in the way of marketing our county. Make Kildare GAA much more attractive. An online presence in terms of live streaming championship games for free or for even a small fee would definitely help! An online Kildare GAA shop with not just gear, but with videos of our successes across the codes. A central cultural point for Kildare GAA. These are random thoughts but jaysus they would certainly help promote it!

Anybody have Michael Duignan’s number? Seems like there’s a great buzz around Offaly these days.

Fair play to Offaly. They have been absolutely shockingly bad for over a decade. Then Duignan pop's up and takes over. Is enthusiastic about the job, organises the friends of Offaly, increases support engagement and interest, makes sure there is buy in from everyone, then gets the likes of Lowery involved.

Now they win an U20 All Ireland. It's no coincidence that once they got a leader who had a vision a bit of foresight and planning but mainly being enthusiastic and driven to make Offaly better that their fortunes changed quite quickly.

Kildare are at a crossroads now. Other Counties have caught up at underage level and we look like we have no grand plan but only individuals working their own patch.

Ah we are fair moany holes in Kildare all the same. Like we got to Division 1 this year and a Leinster Final missing key players.

There is very little chatter on here about the club games at the weekend either. There is a just a bit of funk over the county for the past few years and we need to shake it.

Lowry is a massive boost to Offaly in fairness and Duignan's media savvy means they can boost the profile a lot.

Like it's all OK if things are going well on the field too, but even then people have gripes over Duignan doing media work instead of going to all the Offaly games.

I just think we could put some positive spin on things and be more fun. The ideas about more open trainings at the start of the league or anything just to create a buzz.

Offaly on the up . Fair Play, they are. We beat them this year and last in Championship.

Maybe I'm being too hard but it's not in doubt that being visible, enthusiastic and getting supporters involved is the right way to go about things.

Like we do have some exiting players. Daniel is a human highlights reel!

We could throw out some easy video content from the camp too. Even get the Maynooth students on board to do some content. They have access to kit.

Open training sessions in Athy, Newbridge and say Maynooth College for kids and families too. There are thousands of kids who know that the Dubs are not supermen.

Even in 97 and 98 when they didn't need to there were thousands of free tickets for kids. Some noisy buzz in the stands.

Make it fun!