No publicity and no hype as GAA miss golden opportunity
HERE we are on the eve of the All-Ireland SHC final replay and even living in the heart of Clare I’m wondering if there is a game on.
Where is the hype? Where is the publicity? Where is all the promotion by the GAA of what they themselves claim to be one of the biggest days on their calendar?
All the ingredients were there to build up the replay and give it the treatment it deserves. Why hasn’t this game been in our faces since the final whistle blew on September 8?
If it was any other sporting organisation, do you think they’d have missed a golden marketing opportunity like this? I think we all know the answer.
I’m baffled by the lack of action. Were the GAA themselves afraid that if they started an immediate promotion campaign for the replay it might have upset the people in gaelic football in the two weeks leading up to that final?
That’s the only explanation I can think of, that the GAA has charge of two sports in direct competition with each other for the hearts and minds of players.
Just have a look at the other sporting organisations, see how they promote their own big occasions — many Mickey Mouse events — compared to the All-Ireland hurling final.
Have you seen any billboard promotions? Where have the TV and radio campaigns been? Have you heard any heroes from former eras on the various talk-shows giving this the kind of build-up it deserves?
At this time of the year this should have been a three-week, seven-days-a-week effort, an opportunity to promote hurling. The GAA could have afforded to invest heavily in this, given the extra money they stand to make tomorrow.
Look at the exciting new young stars on both teams, think of how the youngsters of Ireland – not just in the two counties – would have reacted to seeing the faces of those stars on the screens or on the billboards. And the thing is, those are fantastic youngsters as well, educated and articulate, well able to express themselves.
Even Croker – this is an opportunity for the GAA to show off its own headquarters. I often wonder about the people who are running this organisation. Jazz bands, lads hitting balls into the crowd on the day of the game, Hector Ó hEochagáin roaring and shouting – is that the best they can come up with?
The GAA is an amateur organisation and long may that remain so, but there are plenty people getting well paid to ensure its long-term health. It should be an easy job, given the raw material they have to work with. Anyone I’ve introduced to this sport has been hugely impressed. In my opinion, hurling is the finest field-game in the world, and the fact that even at the top it’s an amateur game makes it even more impressive and should make it an easier sell.
The GAA should have gone to town locally, nationally and internationally on this. Every Clare and Cork club should have been encouraged, even subsidised, to do something in the build-up. Every newspaper, radio and television station should have been saturated with ads while abroad, the major networks should have been contacted with this feelgood story.
Such thoughts occur to me just sitting down and I’m sure similar ideas occur to anyone else reading this. So why aren’t those who are well paid to come up with those ideas doing so? They need some adventure, some new ideas, they need to take charge of their own marketing and not leave it to newspapers like The Irish Examiner and the other media organisations be it print, radio or tv to do their own thing.
An opportunity wasted. It should never be wasted again.
