Fears grow over Westmeath GAA’s draw for key project
Paul Hughes
“I wish I could give you a good report, but it’s going badly. I wish I could say it’s going fantastic, but I can’t; it’s not going very well at all.”
These were Westmeath GAA chairman Frank Mescall’s initial words as he briefed clubs on progress with the county board’s ongoing Win A Home In Spain fundraiser, the draw for which has been postponed until June 30.
Delegates at Monday evening’s county board meeting in the Mullingar Park Hotel heard that with the end-of-June deadline fast approaching, Westmeath GAA is falling well short of its ticket sales target, and Mr Mescall made a passionate appeal to clubs to breathe life into the campaign.
Although the draw has been rescheduled, all existing ticket entries remain valid, and on June 30, one entrant will win a new two-bedroom home in Murcia, Spain, and a €50,000 cash prize.
But the coming six and a half weeks will tell whether Westmeath GAA will merely break even on the project or whether it will be able to raise enough funds to support the development of a state-of-the-art new Gaelic games centre of excellence for the Lake County.
Mr Mescall told the meeting that the number of clubs across all codes - 91 in all - with zero ticket sales vastly outnumbered those who have sold almost 100% of their allocated tickets. Club allocations account for a substantial portion of the projected 15,000 tickets the county board hopes to sell to raise €1.5 million for the centre of excellence project.
A surprising development, the chairman added, is the fact that sales of hard-copy tickets are substantially outstripping the number sold online. The chairman explained that the marketing company engaged by Westmeath GAA to promote the Win A Home In Spain campaign, Sixtwo Digital, found that competition from other, cheaper “win a home” competitions was a factor in the poor uptake online.
Delegates queried what the marketing company plans to do to intensify promotion of the draw in the run-up to June 30. There were suggestions that players get involved and that major sporting and business figures be approached. Mr Mescall said that a number of publicity ideas will be rolled out over the coming weeks.
Martin Williams (Lough Lene Gaels) asked if the agreement with the marketing contractor was dependent on the success of ticket sales; the chairman replied that it was not, and the agreement was the contractor will be paid a fixed fee regardless of outcomes.
The former Westmeath hurler suggested that a computer-generated conceptual video of the proposed centre of excellence be developed in order to give the public a better grasp of what is in store for the future if they support the draw. Mr Williams said he had seen this employed in a similar initiative in Dublin, with great success.
One delegate asked why the marketing company could not have attended Monday night’s meeting to brief clubs on its plans for the next six weeks. In response, Mr Mescall reminded the floor of the poor attendance by clubs at the initial launch of the Win A Home In Spain initiative late last year.
The chairman went on to say that to increase the uptake of tickets, a team of handpicked ticket sellers have been going door-to-door and will continue to do so over the coming weeks. He said that he was “dumbfounded” to hear that “good GAA people” living at one house had never once been asked by their own club to buy tickets for the draw.
Aiden McGuire (The Downs) and Des Maguire (Mullingar Shamrocks) supported Mr Mescall’s appeal and called on clubs to “put up or shut up”.
“If we fail at this, we will be a laughing stock,” remarked Mr McGuire, while his Mullingar Shamrocks counterpart wondered if sanctions could be imposed on clubs.
Mr Mescall said that from the very beginning of the initiative, the county board had a choice between a “carrot or a stick” approach, and went with the carrot. “We decided we would look for their [clubs’] co-operation and goodwill rather than threatening them,” he said. “It’s a decision we made in good faith. What happens in the future, other groups will maybe decide that. But for this one, there will be no sanctions.”
With regard to postponing the draw any further, in response to Mr McGuire and Gerry Sheridan (Tyrrellspass), Mr Mescall said there will be no further delays. Under the licence for the draw obtained in court, the county board had an option to reschedule for a month later and, having now done that, it is legally bound to hold the draw by June 30.
The chairman said there will be “opportunities” to sell tickets when Westmeath travel to London for the Tailteann Cup match this weekend, while Mr Mescall hopes to sell more when he attends the Westmeath GAA NY dinner dance in New York this week. Joe Daly, Central Council delegate, said that the county board is there to help clubs who are struggling with sales.
There was a lengthy debate about how the fundraising committee decided on the numbers of tickets allocated to each club. It was stated that details such as a club’s wealth, championship status, paid membership numbers and catchment area population were taken into account.
Mr McGuire said that the initiative would not gain anything from clubs “lambasting each other” about who has sold what. The bottom line is that tickets have to be sold, and that clubs “have to lead on this”. He proposed that the county board write to clubs to request a firm commitment in this regard. Delvin’s Sean O’Brien, meanwhile, suggested that county board officials make face-to-face visits to clubs to get them on board.
Either way, the clock is ticking. Mr Mescall said that this was the biggest project Westmeath had undertaken since the redevelopment of Cusack Park during the 1990s. “Plan A has failed but it is hoped plan B will yield a significant dividend. It will not, however, if clubs don’t row in behind it,” he said.
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