Nobody searches “GAA club website”. They search the club’s name, or “GAA club near me” after moving into the parish, or “under 6 hurling Castleknock” in September when a child comes home from school asking. Then they want one thing, fast: what time is training for the under 8s and where, how do we join and what does it cost, how do we play the lotto, when is the next match. Websites for GAA clubs in Dublin mostly fail that test, because the answers live in fourteen WhatsApp groups and a Facebook page, and the person asking is not in any of them yet.
September, when the under 6s arrive
The club’s biggest intake happens the week the schools go back. A parent new to the parish wants to know if there is a nursery or an academy, what age it starts, what morning it runs, whether their child needs a hurl and a helmet on the first day, and who to text. If that is on one page with a named mentor and the Children’s Officer, the child is on the pitch on Saturday. If it is in a group chat they cannot see, the child goes to the soccer club down the road that did put it on a page.
The same goes for the adult who moved in and wants to play junior football, the parent looking for camogie, and the visiting manager on a wet Sunday trying to find the right pitch and the right gate.
Fourteen WhatsApp groups and one page
Social media is for the chatter: results, photos, the lotto winner, the presentation night. The site is for the fixed facts that need finding by people outside the groups. Training times for every age group, with the pitch and the contact. A link to the county board’s fixtures so they are always right without anyone retyping them. Membership, with the fee bands and the link to Foireann or whatever the club registers through. The lotto: how to play, this week’s jackpot, last week’s numbers. The club shop link. Sponsors with logos and links. The Children’s Officer, the secretary and the PRO. The year’s dates: registration, summer camp, Scór, the AGM, the Christmas raffle.
Soccer, rugby and athletics clubs carry the same load, and we have written about them on the sports clubs page.
Lotto, shop, sponsors and the pitch
The lotto pays for the floodlights, so it gets its own page. If you already sell tickets through Clubforce or a similar system, the page explains the draw and links to it, and the jackpot figure is changed each week by whoever runs the lotto, from their phone. The shop is usually a link to the kit supplier’s online store, with the crest and a photo of the jersey. Sponsors are paying for visibility and deserve a page that gives it: logo, link, and which team or competition they back.
Then the pitch. Every pitch and the all-weather gets an Eircode, a line about parking and which gate to use, and the clubhouse gets a Google Business Profile so that a search for the club on a phone shows the right place, the right hours for the bar and a directions button that works.
A site that survives the AGM
The quiet disaster in club websites is ownership. The domain was registered years ago by a former PRO, in their name, on their card, and it lapses the year they move to Australia. We register the .ie in the club’s name, with the club’s email, so it stays with the club. The connection to Ireland that the .ie registry asks for is straightforward for a GAA club, and we walk through it in how to register a .ie domain. If there is an old site somewhere that nobody can log into, moving your website to a new provider covers getting it back.
The edit page opens from an email link, so the PRO, the secretary, the juvenile secretary and the lotto coordinator can each have one, and when the committee changes at the AGM the links move to the new names. Nothing is lost at handover, and the monthly report goes to the secretary’s address rather than to a person who has since stepped down.
What the committee gathers
The training timetable by age group with pitch and contact. Membership categories and how to pay. The lotto details. Sponsor logos. The club crest and a few photos of the pitch, the clubhouse and the teams, following your own club’s policy on photographs of juveniles. Each pitch’s Eircode. The names of who will hold the edit links. One evening’s work for the PRO, and we take it from there.
Cost for a club
Essentials is the plan for almost every club: €499 to set up and €50 a month, plus VAT, with no contract, for the site, the domain in the club’s name, the Google listing and the edit links. A club with a bar and function room to let, or one that wants to take card payments on the site, can look at Complete at €1,499 and €100 a month. Both are laid out on the pricing page, and clubs outside Dublin start with a phone call.