Club Secretary Thread

callaway92 wrote: »

Hi all

Are Club/County Secretary's any use when wanting to discuss sales proposals to Clubs/Countys?

Secretarys are generally the only contact available for Teams online and I find it very hard to garner a response from them (and they wouldn't be my target end customer anyway).

How would I go about finding contact details for Coaches/Management teams of Countys and Clubs?

Use combination of local papers, club websites to find coaches info or county boards.
Do any county boards put up a handbook like rugby provinces do with info of all officers of the club?
https://d2cx26qpfwuhvu.cloudfront.net/munster/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/26104714/Red-Book-20.21-revised.pdf

callaway92 wrote: »

Hi all

Are Club/County Secretary's any use when wanting to discuss sales proposals to Clubs/Countys?

Secretarys are generally the only contact available for Teams online and I find it very hard to garner a response from them (and they wouldn't be my target end customer anyway).

How would I go about finding contact details for Coaches/Management teams of Countys and Clubs?

Simple answer is it all depends what you're selling.

Lack of response from a club or county secretary would indicate to me that they're either not interested in whatever product or service you're offering, or else that they've already got a suppliers that they're happy with.

By the way, even if what you're offering is ultimately aimed at coaches/managers, you'll still have to go through officialdom such as secretaries & chairpersons anyway. Also, would be surprised if coaches/managers took any more kindly to cold calling or on-spec emails than secretaries do.

Still curious about what it is you're selling, though. If you told us, we might be able to better advise.

P.S. - I see you answered that last question while I was still typing it!

callaway92 wrote: »

Data/Analysis solutions for Team Performance

There we go.

To be honest, it's probably way above the level of 90% or more of "ordinary" grassroots GAA clubs. We get the odd email about it ourselves (maybe even from you!), but it's not something we've ever seriously considered.

You might have more hope at inter-county level, but obviously there's only a limited number of potential customers there, and many of them might already have this looked after already.

Lost Ormond wrote: »

I dont see how it would be way above level of that many clubs and what are "ordinary" clubs btw?

A huge percentage of clubs senior sides as well as top intermediate sides would use video analysis if they can get it. Plenty of junior sides may think about it as well depending on the club, interest from coaches, players etc.

Jaysus. Out of everything I wrote above, I didn't think I'd be called on define what I mean by "ordinary club". But I'll let that one go, unless you really want to get into it.

For what it's worth, we've had just about all matches videoed ourselves for a good few years now, and team management and a couple of others review them all closely. I know many other "ordinary" (!) clubs do the same. But we've never considered engaging and paying for a professional third party to do the review and analysis.

Maybe we're just guilty of a misperception that it would be too expensive. Wonder if the poster here might be able to give a ballpark figure of what typical fees might be? And if that brings into the scope of what an "ordinary" club might consider affordable after all, then that might change things....

All right then, let's talk about what I mean by an "ordinary" club.

To me, an "ordinary" club is one like ourselves. Rural area. Membership fees €80 per adult player, €50 for non-player, and €20 underage. Operating at senior in one code, and intermediate in the other. Fairly competitive in both, but unfortunately, not actually successful. Last adult county title was back in 2008.

Total income for the year from all sources in the region of €80k to €90k, and every cent of it needed. Some years we might have a grand or two left over....other years, we spend more than we take in.

Finding maybe an extra €5,000 a year for professional analysis of eight or ten matches would be a tall order, if that's what it would cost. But again, maybe I'm way off with my guess as to the cost. That's why I'm wondering if we might get a ballpark figure here.

Now, while we're at it....an "extraordinary" club might be one of the larger clubs in Dublin, for example, where there could be 2,000 or more members, membership fees up to €300 per person, and total income from membership alone running into hundreds of thousands of euro each year. That's before you consider other income, from maybe a bar or function room, as well as all sorts of other stuff.

Finding say €5,000 in their annual budget of €500,000 or more wouldn't be as tall a task as finding €5,000 in our budget of €80,000.

I'm not saying in any way that professional analysis wouldn't have its uses. My point is that for many clubs, it probably seems unaffordable.

callaway92 wrote: »

But ‘Video’ analysis is absolute bottom of the barrel stuff and kinda embarrassing to hear in 2021.

Again, even having worked with Amateur Rugby teams in the past (based in South Africa), video analysis is the absolute minimum that should be done.

Insights from a data provider, opposition analysis, pre/post match insights and scouting all are what is needed these days.

Teams not wishing to use it will simply fall behind. There’s no need to hire a million analysts for your own team then as a provider would be doing it for you.

Hi again.

Look, realistic bottom line is that it would be a money thing.

I can obviously and immediately see the benefits that a service like yours could bring to our club. Could give us a significant advantage over our rivals and put us in a much better position to challenge for a senior county title.

But whether or not we could actually afford it is the key consideration. Any chance of a ballpark figure at all? PM me if you prefer. Would genuinely be interested to find out.

As a former club secretary myself - and as somebody who's married to our current one! - let me say it's not necessarily that such messages aren't passed on. Instead, it's that they're just not replied to, if the club isn't interested enough to start making inquiries.

As regards a ballpark figure...understand it would depend on level of data/analysis required...can we simplify it by asking for a ballpark figure for the minimum level you'd recommend for a club operating at senior level in their county championship?

Heading out for a few hours now, for duties including ones linked to return to adult training tonight, but will be back later. And am still curious.

callaway92 wrote: »

That's kinda where my worries were though, as in, are the secretarys actually passing on the brochures etc.

Minimum level for Senior Hurling club would be:

- Analysis for their own players/matches only

- On receipt of video and lineups from the club, data would be available within an agreed contracted length of time, likely 72-96 hours for a lower scale team

- Lowest level of data points available would be (all offensive): Puckouts, Dead-Balls, Shots, Cards. They would all have XY data too (which is the most important part then given that the Products available allow for some nice in-depth searches then, depending on the data you're permissioned for.

- Access to Products where Player stats etc are freely available for what the team is permissioned for

That would likely be in-and-around €1,000 depending on how many matches that team would be expecting.

If a team required more in-depth data for matches that aren't generally covered (and therefore need more people coding them), it would reach about €4,000-€5,000.

For counties we do vary from sport-to-sport but we do have Camogie Teams paying €8,000+ and Men's Hurling and Football paying €12,000+, however, they use extra Products that clubs wouldn't have use for anyway (ie club player scouting)

For the sake of an €800-€1,200 investment, it's a no-brainer for clubs from my opinion and experience anyway.

A lot of clubs will try and do that themselves with volunteers. I've helped out a team in both Hurling and Football with it. There's an app that gathers data in match which most managers seem to be happy with at club level.

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.