McNamee Award


On August 12th 2007, at a function held in Croke Park, Niall Collins, webmaster of the Doheny GAA Club website was presented with the McNamee Award for developing Ireland’s Best GAA club website, on behalf of the club.

The award was presented at a specially convened awards ceremony by GAA president Mr. Nicky Brennan. The McNamee awards are presented annually by the GAA in recognition of outstanding contributions made by individuals in the area of communications.

This concept has evolved since the McNamee report was first published in 1971. The Dohenys club were recognised as having the best website in the 32 counties, for 2006.

The club was represented at the function by chairman, Raymond Lyons and secretary, Donal McCarthy. This is the first time that the award has been won by a club in Munster which strengthens their unique achievement in annexing the title.

The winners’ site which can be located at www.dohenygaa.com consists of many interesting and diverse features to keep readers up to date with the latest news concerning their favourite club, both in football and hurling, in adult and underage grades. It includes a regularly updated news section, featuring match reports and analysis.

The website, which is updated regularly and is very user friendly, keeps a list of all fixtures and result’s for all the clubs teams. It features a guestbook with a regular discussion forum for supporters to interact with one another, results from the club lottery are available, as is the chance to purchase your ticket online. There is also a vast selection of photos to browse through in the photo gallery which are all easily accessible.

It is a great way for people from the club who have moved away or are on holidays to keep in touch with all the activities from their local club. Included in the multimedia section is the opportunity to watch various archive video footage of Doheny triumphs over the last 14 years including junior and intermediate county success.

The Doheny site also contains numerous fascinating articles about the history of the club, which include details of the club’s first game, how the club came into existence and the various key milestones in their colourful and rich history.

The website is designed specifically to accommodate visitors to the website and is easily accessible for people keen to find out more information about their club. Dunmanway, has the honour of being the birthplace of Sam Maguire, and the award winning site boosts vast amount of information on this remarkable man and other local sporting greats from down through the years like Eamon Young.

Fergal McGill, a member of the selection committee acknowledged that 2006 was a very competitive year and stated that it was a great achievement for the Doheny website to come out on top. “The standard in the Website section for the McNamee awards has been extremely high over the last couple of years and in my opinion it is one of the hardest awards to win.”

“There were literally hundreds of clubs from all over the country entered for the Awards and in this context, it was an outstanding achievement for Doheny GAA club to win the award. Indeed, Niall Collins has done an exceptional job in presenting a most interesting and readable website which is a credit to the club and to the GAA in general”.

The website selection committee themselves commented that, “This website has everything a great GAA web site should have. Two particular aspects mark it out as exceptional. The first is the real sense of community you get from it. Secondly, the sites use of multimedia features is impressive and shows a good grasp of how such features can make a club web site more useful as well as more enjoyable for visitors.”

The Dohenys GAA website has everything a good GAA website should have. It has a very attractive design and colour, making for a good and lasting first impression for visitors. A huge quantity of information has been marshalled and presented very effectively. The site makes great use of the latest Web technology and Doheny’s GAA use the site as an administrative tool and focal point in running the club.

The website which was formed in January 2006 has since been visited by over 37,000 users with over 200,000 page views. The unique aspect of the site is the attachment it has created with the Dunmanway and GAA community all over the world. Regular visitors are attracted from areas such as the UK, USA, and Australia, among others.

It is to the Doheny’s club credit that it was chosen as the best website in Ireland and the club can be justifiably proud and honoured. In particular it is a fitting testimony to the dilligence and hard work of webmaster and local man Niall Collins.

In today’s developing world where technology is to the fore, it is pleasing to note that a club from West Cork is at the forefront of modern technology, setting standards for other clubs to follow and winning awards at national level.

The GAA, at club level, is really starting to 'get' Web at last and is beginning to realise its potential to communicate, develop and administer clubs more efficiently. Dohenys with Niall Collins at the helm are in good hands both on and off the field and have demonstrated their willingness to embrace modern
technology.

* Click here to view photo's of the event