The County Board has announced tonight that County Secretary Kevin O’Toole has decided to step down from the position, due to family and work commitments. The full text of tonight’s County Board statement is available here.
As the driving force behind the significant work that’s been undertaken over the past year and a bit to stabilise the financial position of Mayo GAA – including the establishment of the highly successful Cairde Mhaigheo initiative – Kevin’s track record in his short period as County Secretary is an impressive one. It’s a real pity that he’s not in a position to continue this work but, equally, it’s wholly understandable why he has taken the decision to resign at this point in time.
In its statement tonight, the County Board says that it wishes Kevin and his family well and that it hopes to see him back in some capacity in the future. Hear, hear, I say as, I’m sure, will many other Mayo supporters.
What exactly has Cairde Mhaigheo achieved to be deemed “highly successful”?
It achieved €172k in fundraising revenue in 2012 (with little or no impact on gate receipts compared to 2011) and 2013 membership is expected to reach at least 1,200, up from 800 in its initial year. In my opinion, those figures indicate that the initiative has indeed been a major success to date.
Why are some people so bent on knocking any sort of success, its the same old story in our county shaft everything including the team, management…everything……..Thank God for those in the county who promote confidence………..we dont need brollix or rte or others, we have enough of them in our own county………..we need to start believing in ourselves and supporting those involved. Last year for instance, was a success, it might not have delivered the ultimate, but it did build a good team that garnered a lot of steel and We are Mayoexperience along the way………………..Could us Mayo people ever unite and back each other, regardless the outcome………If the doubters, knockers and hand wringers had won out on an national level at the end of the 2nd decade of the 1900s, where would we be today????
Agree with the comments above. If the ground work has been set in the past 15 months we can only get better. Sean Feeney was not bad either?
If your comments JJ were in response to the question posed by Peter, then I think you were completely over the top. Peter, like myself was obviously not aware of Cairde Mhaigheo’s achievements in 2012 and more than likely we weren’t alone in this regard.
But to his credit, Willie Joe was back within two hours, with all the information necessary to put any doubters minds to rest. Thanks to Peter, we now known the facts !
Sad that WJ is expected to prove the substance of his comments .
jj,
It is not sad. It is great because he is getting his information from a proper source and he is making the general public more aware of what is going on. He has great news and news that we were not aware of and unable to appreciate it up until now..
Agree with JJ,in that the tone of Peter’s post suggested that he didn’t exactly approve of Cairde Mhaigheo.
I wouldn’t get too hung up on it, to be honest – Peter asked a straightforward question, which I was happy to answer. All he was doing was asking me to back up the opinion I’d expressed. He may (or may not) have another opinion on the issue but that’s fine too.