PRO John McEniff signs off with final convention report

John McEniff has delivered his fourth and final report to convention as the popular Bundoran native steps away as Donegal GAA press relations officer. 

With interest in our county teams continuing to grow substantially across a variety of media and social media platforms, McEniff admits that attempting to combine such a demanding role with his own busy personal and work schedule had simply become too much. 

Indeed, it’s a role that he feels might need a designated press relations team, and not just one single officer going forward. And he’s credited a number of others for their assistance in the last four years in charge. 

“It is with regret I leave the post as it brings its own rewards, tempered this year by projects that did not get enough attention - specifically the new website got too little time and a planned 2022 Donegal Annual did not happen. 

“The pressures of combining increased business duties and PRO work squeezed time availability. As such, it is sensible to handover to someone with more time and/or a bigger PRO team. 

“I am very much indebted to all that I have worked with in my role over the last four years across all units of the GAA – clubs, County Boards, the Ulster Council and GAA HQ in Croke Park – as well as those on the PR and Marketing Committee”.

Interest in Donegal’s fortunes was once again very encouraging across its social media.  

But Donegal supporters’ main source for information remains the website. And while there were some technical issues with certain areas of the platform at times, McEniff says those problems continue to be addressed ahead of 2023. 

“The official Donegal website - www.DonegalGAA.ie – is the cornerstone of CLG Dhún na nGall communications. It was substantially revamped by Spence Digital at the start of 2022. 

“There were technical reasons for the revamp. The website was six years old, had been added to on an ad-hoc basis since 2016, and was running out of memory using outdated technology. 

“The new website is easier to update and uses less resources, making it a lot quicker for users. The new Cloudways server is far superior to the original Siteground one and allows us to easily add memory if the site starts getting a lot more traffic.

“Activity on the website rose sharply in 2022 with the Covid pandemic having an impact on traffic the previous year. Over the course of the 12-month period between November 1, 2021 to October 31, 2022, there were 3.8m pageviews on DonegalGAA.ie. 

“That was close to a million higher than during the prior 12 months and two and a half times more than in 2020 (1.6m views).”

In regards to Donegal GAA’s social media channels, the numbers there were also impressive with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube and Linkedin pages all growing their follower counts. 

“Visits via other social media channels was at its highest level yet but as a share of the total, around a third, it was similar to last year. This reflects our practice of directing visits to our news blog via these channels, as well as slightly more social media followers.”