Launch of Tir Conaill Harps GAC Glasgow 3 year club development plan

 

 

Almost six months of groundwork has paid off for the club members of Tir Conaill Harps GAC, when 60 people attended the launch of it's 3 year development plan, in the Glencairn social club, in Glasgow. The audience was made up of parents, members, players and many former players who were invited to re-connect with the club. Three of those players, Danny McGowan, Shaun O'Donnell and Anton Gallagher were among the speakers, which also included Christina Duffy, who is the driving force behind the club's current underage football section and primary school coaching programme and club founder, Tommy Main, now living in Roscommon, but a key player in developing and facilitating the plan. The plan was devised following a major consultation process with club members, which involved a planning meeting in the summer attended by forty people, which was a brainstorming session to address all the key priority areas to build a unified and structured club. Three work groups were set up to address these priorities in the areas of Coaching and Games Development, Administration and communication, and also Finance.

 

             Over the autumn months online discussion groups were set up to draft the plan. Each of the workgroups met last month to finalise the details and prepare for the launch. From a coaching perspective coach education and standards was deemed a high priority. With this in mind the club will be hosting a Foundation Level football coaching course early in the new year and already more than twenty members have signed up to it. Later in the year the club hopes to send a number of coaches to Ireland to participate in a Level One course . A major problem for the club in recent times has been to nail down a manger for the junior football and camogie teams and this will be one of the priorities for year one. The club also plan to expand it's primary schools football coaching programme and will be running a football tournament for the schools in February of next year.

             In terms of administration, the club will be restructuring the Management Committee and creating new roles to reflect the ideas in the development plan. There will be a Finance Officer appointed, whose role it is to set up a workgroup to develop plans for corporate events to finance the club's ambitious plans, which also include being a key partner and anchor club in the Re-development of Pearse Park, the county pitch, at Cambuslang. This will require a major fund-raising drive by the club. There is also a much needed coaching workgroup being set up headed by a Coaching Officer, which will be a vital position to develop the club's grassroots programme. In addition, to this the club will be appointing a Student Officer to support the welfare and integration of student players and coaches.

 

                  Promoting the club to the wider community and an improvement in it's social and print media presence will be important objectives in the plan. To this end a promotional club newsletter will be launched around St.Patrick's Day. It is the key area of finance which will prove to be the toughest challenge with the Finance work-group being set the task of raising £60,000 in year one. Among the events they will be taking on is a dinner dance to mark the club's 25th anniversary next year and a Golf Day. In keeping with the deals of the plan to re-connect with the many people the club has reached in it's history, there will be a memorial service in 2019 for deceased members. There was a great sense of positivity surrounding the launch and a large number of people expressing interest in supporting the many facets of the plan. The club AGM is being held next month. It's then the harps will get down to the serious business of matching ideas with action.

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