Previous Board Members conducted a series of interviews with a variety of sports people from various sports and sports media:
2021 Interview Series
Interview with afcstuff Founder
Pádraig Kavanagh owns and operates a Twitter account labelled @afcstuff which boasts almost 200 thousand followers and is one of the largest of its kind in Europe. The hint is in the name as it is a fan account of Arsenal providing news updates of all kinds regarding the Premier League giant. He is a prime example of the rising opportunities for non-traditional media on social media. He has forged his way all the way to the top, carving out a niche and this interview seeks to detail his inspiration for his maverick career path and future aspirations and endeavours. (Instagram: @afc_stuff)
Q1
When did you start the account?
I started the account in early April 2015, just after my 16th birthday while in transition year.
Q2
What was your inspiration to start the account?
In transition year, I was very interested in becoming a journalist. Twitter was the social media platform I was using the most anyway at the time myself & I thought it would be good experience for my writing skills to start an account of this nature. I also noticed a gap in the market for a consistent Arsenal news account on the platform, not to mention how passionate I am about the sport & in particular the club itself.
Q3
There may be a conception this is easy or can be done by anyone, could you detail all the hard work, dedication and consistency you had to put into this to grow the account?
A lot of people appreciate the work that goes into it, but I often hear people saying that they could just as easily say they could do it themselves. I could probably count on one hand the amount of Arsenal games I’ve missed since I started the account, that’s not to say I had been missing them before, as I always had a big passion for watching games anyway. For match days, I have set-up a routine for myself – relevant news & quotes, team news one hour before kick-off, among other bits of content. There’s a lot of dedication involved too, for example when Arsenal had a pre-season tour of the USA in summer 2019, I altered my sleep schedule completely to be on par with the games, press conferences & team events. I remember one game had a 4am kick-off & it was almost 9am before I finally got to bed. During transfer windows especially, it’s almost like I’m up 23 hours a day as it’s so important being alert & first to the breaking news.
Q4
Could you detail some of the perks?
With the audience I’ve built, it attracts big brands & companies. I’ve always been fortunate enough to be offered club level or box seat tickets to Arsenal games & part of that was partnering with a company who were official partners of the club, VBET. For a game in September 2019, I was able to bring one of my closest friends who is also an Arsenal fan along to experience it. We had a box, including a three course meal & drinks. The box was positioned right next to the players boxes. I was very lucky to meet one of my favourite players, Alexandre Lacazette, who was injured for the game. I was able to chat with him for a few minutes & he told me he was aware of my account. All in all, it was a surreal experience. I had further trips booked but unfortunately Covid-19 has halted them for now.
Since lockdown, I’ve had the opportunity to be involved in Zoom calls with past & present players, such as Calum Chambers, Gilberto Silva & Per Mertesacker. As a massive Arsenal fan, just getting to experience these has been something I’ll never forget.
Q5
How do you make money? (brands etc.)
As I said, having such a big audience, all interested in the Arsenal & soccer is a very attractive source for people to get their name or their competition out to the world. Often, it’s big companies with campaigns who want to just maximise interactions. Some of the companies I’ve worked with include eBay, Amazon, EA Sports and Paddy Power among others. With the size of my account, I get to charge a premium price.
Q6
Have you been offered money without specifying an amount for the account?
Yes, I’ve had two very generous offers for the account but as of now, I have no interest in selling, whatever the offer.
Q8
Is it hard to explain to people what you do?
Extremely, with my parents’ generations, who are not very clued up on technology or social media, it’s definitely a task explaining it. For myself, I call myself a news aggregator but also a bit of a social media influencer. I collect news from various journalists and organisations, post them all in one place, but sometimes post stats that I have researched myself or on occasion my own exclusive news – I had an exclusive when Arsenal released their Adidas 2019/20 kits, being the first in the world to reveal them.
Q9
Is the account sustainable – what is the future?
It’s difficult to say. Twitter has remained relevant for over a decade & at the moment is only growing bigger & bigger. However, social media as a whole is changing a lot everyday. There’s been examples of platforms going stale & eventually dying, such as Bebo, so it’s important for me to keep avenues open. For the account, I’m focused on growing the account as much as possible. There’s also the risk of getting permanently suspended. Twitter is very hard on copyright rules & although I’m very careful with what I post, people can often make false claims that get the account temporarily suspended. I’ve had that happen twice but I’ve successfully won my appeal both times.
Q10
Is consistency key?
Absolutely, I think consistency is the most important thing. Since 2015, I’ve seen 100s of similar accounts try the same thing, but eventually give up after a few weeks/months. Consistency, engaging content, being first or at least one of the first to post the breaking news & as well, I think good punctuation is very important.
Interview with a Professional Golfer
My name is John Oster (21) and I am a newly turned professional golfer playing out of UHI (university of the highlands and islands). I am currently in my final year of study and will graduate with a baHons in professional golf. I was born in Switzerland and moved to Ireland when I was 4 years old. I went through the Irish schooling system and played every sport imaginable throughout my youth. Golf was the final sport I had tried and I was hooked pretty much instantly.
1.How did you get interested in the game of golf?
Ironically golf never piqued my interest when I was young, I enjoyed playing football and ice hockey (pretty much anything fast and exciting) and thought of golf as a boring old mans game. My father used to try to get me to play pitch and putt with him and I always said no. As I grew older my friends started playing pitch and putt during the summer and I joined them just for fun. I realized that golf was a lot more challenging than any other sport I had previously played and the mental challenge was enjoyable. From then I joined the local golf club (Laytown and Bettystown golf club) and the desire to improve has never left me.
2.What made you realise you wanted to pursue golf as a career?
When I finished school I didn’t really know what I wanted to do or what career path I wanted to go down. My mother found the Professional golf course in UHI online and asked if I was interested in trying it out and even if it amounted to nothing it would give me a year to figure out what I wanted to do. So, naturally I said that was a good idea and moved to Scotland to try out this course. I ended up really enjoying it and realized that in one form or another I wanted to work in the golf industry.
3.At what point did you realise you had what it takes to go professional?
There was no individual point where I thought to myself “i can actually do this”, it was more of a long term realization. Playing matches against highly renowned universities and individual players and ending up beating them and seeing that I wasn’t actually far from the standard which I had perceived myself to be. Playing against these people who are highly regarded internationally and beating them is the biggest wake up call that I am good enough to at least giving professional golf a go.
4.Could you detail some of the hardest aspects of being a professional athlete/golfer (travel etc.)
Becoming a top athlete not only requires you to be very good at what you do but it is very important to have a good team of people around you to help you achieve your goals. With golf being very expensive a lot of the biggest issues and reasons quite a lot of people don’t succeed is unfortunately financial. There is a huge cost to travel / hotels/ entry fees. In golf you are almost betting on yourself. You pay an entry fee to go and play and try make that money back and eventually get noticed. Golf is also time consuming so trying to practice full time while having a life outside golf can be difficult to juggle.
5.Do you study the psychological side to golf? If so what is involved?
Yes we do have a golf psychology module in 3rd year and 4th year of our course. The main areas we look into are different types of anxiety and severity of this and the effect this has on performance and different types of psychological interventions which can be used to enhance golfing performance. Everything we do in psychology is looked at from the point of view of how it impacts performance and how performance can be either hindered or enhanced by psychology, we then look to trial these psychological “tricks” and put them into practice to enhance our own performance.
6.Could you detail the career prospects in golf available outside of a professional tour?
With golf being a global industry there is opportunities in golf all over the world. These opportunities can range from organizing golf holidays (tour operator) to events management setting up pro and amateur events, custom fitting golf clubs for people is a big market, golf coaching is another career path for professionals. There are lots of job opportunities in golf hospitality like being a golf club manager. There are a lot of different career paths someone can go down in the golf industry which makes it very diverse and appealing to lots of people.
7.You have worked in many different top golf clubs, could you describe your experiences?
I have been lucky enough to work in a few exclusive golf club in different parts of the world such as Adare Manor hotel and golf resort, Baltray golf club, Dubai creek golf and yacht club and Jumeriah Golf Estates (dubai). As a whole the experiences have been very positive. Of course there are areas in the industry which I think need to change. A lot of golf clubs are in need of modernization to eliminate the stigma of golf being old and boring. One of the best parts of working in a golf club is everyone is considered to be a team and in most places all the various departments work as one and you end up making friends along with very good connections.
8.What advice would give to someone starting off in golf?
For someone starting golf I would say you need to enjoy it and be realistic, if you’re starting out you’re not going yo be brilliant straight away, however you will be able to improve quickly. In golf it is very easy to be too harsh on yourself, I am victim of this myself. I would say that you absolutely have to enjoy what you’re doing. As cliche as it sounds if you don’t enjoy it there is no point in doing it. Golf practice can be very tedious however if you play games and keep it interesting you will progress far quicker.
9.What are your hopes for your future in the game of golf?
My hopes in golf are to try and play professionally for living, that’s the ultimate dream. However if this is unsuccessful I hope to be head professional in a big golf club and coach full time.
UCC Sports Law Clinic 