Spokesperson Guidelines for Communicating with the Media during a Crisis

• Be aware of the constant movement of news via social media. Twitter can fill the timelines with inaccurate information quickly.
• Have your social media team briefed on the situation, on hand and able to monitor and respond.
• Fill the void yourself. If there is a likely gap between communicating the actual situation and the first enquiries – give the media some background on your organisation. Are you aware of the us and what we do and can we give you some background. Etc etc
• Demonstrate organizational concern about people. “Our primary concern at present is the health of our students…”
• Explain what is being done to remedy the situation.
• Keep the message consistent with all constituencies. Never tell one constituency anything that is not being told to the media.
• Be open, honest, and tell the full story. If you do not, someone else will, thus increasing the possibility that the crisis team loses control of the situation.
• Never respond with “no comment,” instead explain why you cannot answer the question. (i.e., we do not have those details confirmed at this time, we will provide you with an update when we do have an answer to that question.)
• Do not guess or speculate. If you do not know the answer, say so and offer to track down the answer.
• Respect reporter deadlines. If you promise to get information, do so promptly.
• Don’t get drawn into blaming other organizations or being seen to shift the responsibility.
• Never speak off the record. The media can use any information released.
• Never give exclusive interviews during a crisis. All members of the media should have the chance for gathering information.
• If an injury or death has occurred, do not release the name(s) of the injured/deceased until all next of kin (immediate family) have been notified.
• Do not provide damage estimate, discuss responsibility for the incident, or discuss legal liability in any way.
• Be available 24 hours a day.
• Do not discuss illegal activity at any time. If it is assumed, say “Police are investigating. We are cooperating.” Refer all questions to the appropriate law enforcement agency.
• In cases when media request interviews with family members, provide a liaison to family members for the media so that the family can protect their privacy if they choose.
• Avoid “side comments” meant to be humorous. Do NOT accept hypothetical questions. Do NOT repeat negatives in a question. Taken out of context, these remarks can be very damaging.
• Use everyday language, not jargon, when talking to reporters.
• Provide written materials that give reporters background information.

The sun shone having no alternative on the nothing new said Sam. A great start. New Year & same old same old. Or is it? Opportunities to renew, rethink, reject & restart.

Observe the things I hoped to do this time last year. Some achieved, some started. Some not started, some strangled at birth; many failed & a few notable successes. Likewise for 2016 there are things I will do, things I won’t, things I’d like to do but won’t follow through. Successes. Failures. Always failures. Learn the most from those nut crushers.

I’m certainly not making any grandiose claims here. Hoist with your own petard is a very public humiliation. No, any resolutions will be made in the privacy of my own home, my own diary pages, my own mind.

The brilliant Nobel Prize winning mathematician John Nash said in an interview: “I began to tire of certain types of irrational thinking.” It’s an interesting concept, especially in the case of Nash. His struggle with schizophrenia almost certainly contributed to his brilliance as a mathematician.

He acknowledged the potential link between an unconventional mind & creative thought. Proving the age-old adage that madness & genius are closely related.

“Times I didn’t follow the norm, thought differently. But I can see there’s a connection between not following normal thinking & doing creative thinking. I wouldn’t have had good scientific ideas if I had thought more normally. One could be very successful in life & be very normal…”

In his autobiography Nash claimed he was able to ‘will’ himself out of his disorder. Is this possible? Is it possible to harness the power of our own mind to eliminate all sorts of negative thoughts, self doubt, irritations etc? If so, how can you train your dragon?

Nash said:

“I began to intellectually reject some of the delusionally influenced lines of thinking which had been characteristic of my orientation. This began, most recognizably, with the rejection of politically-oriented thinking as essentially a hopeless waste of intellectual effort. So at the present time I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists.”

Looking at all aspects of what we do, coaching, teaching, watching our children learn, it is the conventional that is the norm & the unconventional is increasingly frowned upon. That stifles creativity & non conformity.

Let 2016 embrace more non comformity & see where that takes us.

As 2015 fades into 2016 with all that a new year brings, the embers of the last 12 months sizzle a glow a last few times.

2015 was a year in which the plan was to do less. The catalayst was our planned family expedition to Peru which fell fair and square in the middle of the season and I initially thought accommodating the holiday and coaching commitments would be impossible.

Thankfully that proved not to be the case. It meant I missed some milestones but it was not something I would have missed.I was sorry to be absent for the Ulster final with the Antrim Minors – a group to which we devoted good time. It was a learning experience being there for the All Ireland quarter final though, and there are lessons on all these big days if you are open to them.

One of the imperatives of coaching is that you have to reinvent yourself if not the wheel every year, particularly if returning to the same group. I have had to be chameleon, chrysalis as well as coach in working with the main project in the Eoghan Rua Camogie team.

Facing into the pre season last winter the legacy of Gráinne McGoldrick’s injury hung over plans like a dark cloud. To see our taliswoman injured and facing an uncertain future struck to the core of the group. How the players would respond individually and collectively was the cornerstone of our plans. The longer term outcome was in much greater doubt and all year I was asked questions about it.

Over Christmas I had obtained a copy of Raymond Verheijen’s book on periodisation which shaped the way in which I approached the season and indeed in many ways it changed the way in which I approached all the teams I was involved with subsequently. If you put the player at the centre of what you are doing, you are forced to adopt a different approach and see a different way. That became apparent.

To sketch out what I was at, I was working with our u14 club hurlers, coaching them every Friday on the 3G with Jonny and Costas, two good men who contributed immensely to the whole set up and I felt were better communicating with the young lads than myself. Especially come Féile we were collectively buzzing and on Finals day Johnny took a lead which was fantastic.

I also agreed to help prepare the University hurlers for their championship. Having been one point short of an All Ireland a couple of years earlier albeit with a superior team and super bunch of lads the Holy Grail is still there to be sought. The campaign was short but interesting.

A derby match against Magee was unnecessarily sulphurous. Having won that the lads fell short against IT Blanchardstown their nemesis a couple of years earlier in the final. The irony of all of this is that had Coleraine and Magee stuck together they could possibly have won a couple of titles, but with the backing of Croke Park the division of the original team has helped neither campus develop their hurling capacity. In my experience hurling in Ulster needs to grab itself by the balls and develop itself. The University journey is a means to keep the coaching eye and arm in and look at small margins of development.

Also over the winter I had completed my Level 2 classroom based study and during the course of the season I had the Logbook and practicals to get sorted. As the song goes, it straightened out my thinking. It also introduced me to a number of other hurling coaches with whom I was able to share sporadic contact over the rest of the year. Indeed it was a devastating to hear of the death later in the season of Shane Mulholland, one of the guys with whom we share the course. Shane was a hurler with Fermanagh, I knew him only briefly on the Level 2 but what a sound lad he was. Hurling mad, good craic and a decent fella. He’ll be missed.

As winter moves towards Spring it is time for the Camogie player to emerge from their cocoon and start thinking about training. Armed with my new approach, I devised an entirely new pre season programme which I applied to the letter. The sessions incorporated the ball into everything from day one. We also had the task of integrating a number of younger players into an established panel.

It was a promising start, I had high hopes as to where it might end but little did I realise I would get there, albeit with an entirely different group. That is a tale for another day for sure.

Client Piece – Selling Blog

It’s Halloween. Oiche Shamhna back home. A time of dirty dark deeds done dirt cheap. TwoTon Murphy has a tale that will chill your soul, fill you with dread and sour your stout. The Dagda. Like the badass penny he is, turning up when you least expect him. Scaring the shit out of Banshees, goblins and the Devil himself.

If you need an arse kicked, ball pucked, maul rolled, or problem solved. Dagda’s your man. Some man for one man the Dagda. You never know where he might turn up, just when you need him.

When the mood seized him and the music moved him he’d hammer out a deadly beat on the cheeks of his own Arse. BallyFuckinShannon Coothill, BallyBastardinPoreen – places he trucked into, fucked about and left. Destruction, craic, women swooning, men shaking. You name it.

Five string banjo slung across his back, sittin’ low on his bike, huge club in hand. This man wreaks havoc and devastation wherever he goes. Lover fighter, hurler, scrumhalf, flanker and hooker all in one man. He can shift. By God he can. Honey words. Tinder? More like Firestarter.

Himself and herself. A yoke from Ballyhea direction that was fond of puckin in a few balls herself got it on, on the width of the bike seat. Feel the power between your thighs, he roared as they bucked and wheelied, before falling off backwards as the accelerator got her out of hand. That’s why I wear the leathers and the TwoTonMurphy, he chuckled roarin’ off up the road.

Major craic dealer, every pub, club, bar and restaurant he turns into a cauldron of mayhem. A funnel for sinking stout hidden in the environs of a voluminous leather jacket. In a few seconds he’d whip it out and lower a pile of pints in record quick time. A French hottie tried it standing on a seat on the bar. Downed a pint in six seconds she did, broke hearts when she sang the Marseillaise by popular demand. Five score men fell in love with her petite petiteness and the women – the better halves – they called her a Wee Bitch. Sex on stout. Dagda? Who’s next he’d roar, and a lad in a wheelchair drove thru the crowd. By jaysus he wanted some of that. He was last seen with the French Petite on his pillion heading for the N17 and a tank of Gas.

The place was rockin, he’d fire off a flurry of tunes on the banjo a – sliver gleamin black dream machine that offered deliverance to all who heard it. Next he’d roar c’mon te fuk, before ripping a bodhran from a bearded ceolteori in the corner to drum out a few hornpipes before tossing it back. That’s how you rattle that goatskin, he roared.

Sometimes he slept on the bike, others in the warm embrace of whoever took him home for a mattress-buster of a session. Last Saturday he booked into a hostel near Eyre square after a charge of John Jameson’s liquid gold. The snores of him could be heard in Howth and Hackballscross. What a fuckin hallion, complained an enforced inflicted roommate. That’s a fuckin gobshite.

Three Germans packed their stuff and left, one in terror as the top bunk sagged dangerously close to his face after a spring broke and shattered into shite, The Dagda Arse a huge and imposing edifice of evil dangling too close for comfort. Now that’s Halloween.

He hurled with a hurl with a huge bas and I mean fuckin huge. The grain was worn black with all the sliotars pucced in anger over the years. Over the bar and still rising like injected with Viagra, but he needed none of that bat shit to get them up. Hit the ball to me he roars I’m marking a midget, before crashing another point over the ball stop.

In the rugby he was like O’Connell, Gaillimh and Claw rolled into one big muscle of badassery. Ripping ball out of rucks, body parts flying the ball gripped in one hand and some man’s head in the other, tossed to one side as he strode for the line. If we’d had him last week. . . but sure.

Halloween’s coming, and it’s near that time. From Derry, to Dingle and Cross to Cork you’ll hear the roar when the craic begins. The Dagda Rides. There’s one in all of us.