Club Secretary Thread

Buy a decent club camera with another go pro strapped to it to capture close ups. Thats probably €1000+ gone.
Get volunteers to man camera at games.
They can also be used for other teams in club and if the club is lucky to reach a final the copies of game can be sold for €10 to recoup costs.
Appoint someone in management team to trawl videos for stats. It doesn't have to be hugely in depth.
Could be same person who does in game stats, or someone else as it is very time consuming.

Personally, I think a lot of the spending on some things that clubs could do is a bit pointless - particularily when you look at the overall spending a club does.

In a lot of instances, as said above, clubs actually have their own volunteers helping out with video and stats and they are happy enough to leave it that way and spend the money else where - where there's usually a far bigger return on investment.

Granted the bigger clubs might be spending money on stats etc but that would be rare at the amateur level.
If every club were spending money at it, there's no benefit to be had from it (some would say you get left behind - again, I don't buy it)
It's a bit like an overweight lad going out and spending 4K on an ultra light bike to improve his cycling performance......when there are obviously better areas to spend the money on.


So, I may have knocked the product being discussed here (apologies, just my own opinion) but generally clubs get approached from people selling their wares via email/social media etc all the time and while they might be discussed at various levels, there may not be a response back to the original communications because you know, everyone has a day job and time is limited.

callaway92 wrote: »

It’s unfortunate that the bigger picture isn’t being looked at in the above posts, but it is what it is.

Look,
you're trying to sell a product, and you've a right to defend the concept etc, but there's lots of areas that clubs have to make decisions on in relation to spending and indeed the time of it's volunteers. That's the bigger picture.

kksaints wrote: »

True but its a value for money thing. Is the stats that you get worth the extra costs? I personally feel that it would be, the more stats you have the better, but a lot of managers and in particularly club treasurers wouldn't agree.

Yeh this is it exactly and like the other poster said too.

Instead of having volunteers chip in with what they believe is helpful, you instead have people who so have created Products and Dashboards for Premier League clubs, LNR Rugby teams etc and already have top-end products available for these teams to slot into.

Granted, for some clubs, they just mightn’t be able to afford top-end stuff, but to be happy out with volunteers doing a few things for them in their spare time is depressing if they have any want to improve.

kippy wrote: »

Massive emphasis on "improving" - not all clubs are about "improving" on the pitch and clubs have different ideas about where "improvements" can be made.

Volunteers is how these clubs exist by the way.

You can take the massive emphasis on ‘improving’ away.

It’s about gaining an Edge on your opponents and not slipping too.

You don’t have to improve but you can’t fall behind and have it be too late then to catch up due to stubbornness against an evolving period for Sports Data.

‘Getting stuck in’ doesn’t cut it anymore.

kksaints wrote: »

A lot of fans would disagree with you there! :D

The problem is that it leads to an arms race amongst clubs with each club spending more and more money on different things such as sports data and physio treatments. Eventually it would probably lead to clubs suffering from financial problems due to overspending. The financial pool for a lot of clubs is limited.

Yeh for Clubs, the financial pool is hurting them for sure in regard to investment in Analysis.

Intercounty Teams spend a fortune on Fitness Data (many of them spending 5 figures a year) so there’s definitely money to be spent there. There is increased funding for GAA, Camogie Association and LGFA so there definitely is a bubble to come.

kksaints wrote: »

Interesting, that doesn't include Match Analysis I assume.

Nah that’s pure fitness data (STATSports being the main crowd). They don’t do performance though.

You’ll see some teams with the vests on and the thing on their upper back. They are major players in Fitness data for multiple sports now.

callaway92 wrote: »

Nah that’s pure fitness data (STATSports being the main crowd). They don’t do performance though.

You’ll see some teams with the vests on and the thing on their upper back. They are major players in Fitness data for multiple sports now.

Always wonder how comfortable they are, they look odd. Would you have any idea as to what specific data is gathered from them?

Apologies for taking the thread off topic somewhat.

kksaints wrote: »

Always wonder how comfortable they are, they look odd. Would you have any idea as to what specific data is gathered from them?

Apologies for taking the thread off topic somewhat.

Top speeds
Heart Rates
Length of time at certain speeds

Things like that

It’s only done off the vest, so lack of Pitch XY does hurt it to an extent and doesn’t give the full picture.

Company I was with before had a ‘three camera’ system set up with the players tagged in it that did the fitness tracking. Is definitely better quality but the company doesn’t want to bother with it really.

I also apologise for taking this so off topic.

Uncle Pierre wrote: »

I see a lot more discussion here since I last visited this thread yesterday afternoon.

I'm going to back to that ballpark figures thing. When you say something like €1,000 depending on how many matches the team would want, do you mean:
a) you could have several matches analysed for a total of €1,000 so long as you weren't taking the proverbial by asking for 30 or 40 to be done, instead of four or five?

or

b) you could settle on a rate of €1,000 per match, depending on how many you'd be doing overall?

Sorry for getting bogged down in money, but consensus seems to be that whether anybody likes it or not, it's a financial decision for clubs at the end of the day.

A hypothetical example would be €1,000 for a package of 10 of a team’s own matches to be coded at a certain level (ie if they wanted more in-depth coding, more people would be required). If they wanted extra matches they pay ad-hoc (perhaps some challenge matches etc).

If they started asking for other team’s matches etc if would depend on if we have video for them and/or rights to distribute them.

Uncle Pierre wrote: »

A rate working out at €100 per match might bring it into the scope of a lot of clubs all right.

I didn't think it likely myself that you'd see any change out of maybe €500 a go.

If you don't mind me suggesting it, put the price somewhere prominent in whatever marketing emails or other material you send. And if you've got in-depth GAA knowledge or experience, play that up too.

I operate my own club's general email address, where many of these marketing mails tend to land. The last one we got about this sort of thing was a few weeks ago from some crowd in Sweden, talking about how they'd worked with top soccer clubs across Europe. Nothing to indicate they had any knowledge of GAA at all (apart from finding our email address!), and nothing to indicate that prices might not be astronomical and beyond the reach of "ordinary" GAA clubs (with apologies to Lost Ormond for using that word again )

I honestly think your biggest challenge here is not to try convince clubs that they could benefit from professional analysis. It's to convince them that they could afford it.

Offered as friendly advice and hope it's taken that way!

Appreciate the feedback!