O'Brien to run for PRO role

ADRIGOLE’s Joseph Blake will have at least one opponent in the race for Cork County Board after the entry of Cian O’Brien.

Glen Rovers/St Nicholas clubman O’Brien is the outgoing PRO of Rebel Óg, having been involved since the new underage body came into being in 2011. He also served a year as Rebel Óg IT officer and has been on the Cork GAA PR committee for nine years, two as secretary, also serving nine years on the IT committee. In addition, he has been a coach education tutor for nine years, with three years as an IT tutor and served one year as development officer for the Cork County Minor Board. When Féile Peile was held in Cork in 2011, he was part of the organising committee.

‘During my time in Rebel Óg, I have worked with four county board PROs,’ he says, ‘Ger Lane for one year, Tracey Kennedy for three years, Edmond Forrest for one year and current PRO Donal Leahy for 3 years.

‘During my time in Rebel Óg, I have built our social media followers up in twitter to 10,800 and during this time sent more than 30,000 tweets with 6,000 on facebook.

‘During my last full year in charge of the Rebel Óg website, we had 2,395,473 hits on the site, which was increase from 1.5 million in 2016 when website was not mobile responsive.’

O’Brien has previously run for PRO in 2014 and 2015. He is keen to focus on evolving the online and social media aspects of the role. 

‘My vision for the role of PRO if elected is to implement a clear communication plan,’ he says.

‘This would include areas such as designing a communications plan to collate and disseminate newsworthy items for the club and county.

‘I would also like to redesign the Cork GAA website to make it more mobile-responsive and to have integrated club fixture, results and information page for each club in Cork.

‘There would also be a smart-phone app to allow push notification updates direct to mobile phones and I’d hope to develop and publish a monthly Cork GAA newsletter.

‘In addition, I want to develop our communications channels in line with Cork GAA’s vision and strategy, promotion upcoming games, events, workshops, competitions and events through social media and media outlets and continue to design and development Cork team announcement graphics and videos along with pre-match posters and adverts.’

The new PRO will be elected at the county board convention, which has been pushed back to Saturday, December 15th to allow for nominations for vice-chairman in the wake of Kevin O’Donovan’s appointment as board secretary/CEO.