There are a number of nuances which we realise may confuse or concern members when they log into Foireann, the GAA administration system. This page attempts to explain some of these.
Background
Foireann has been introduced by the GAA as a centralised membership system. It is designed to replace 2 other systems:
- Third party membership systems such as those offered by Club Force and Club Zap and others.
- Servasport, the previous central registry for all GAA Players.
This system has been rolled out in the early part of this year, and is still going through some modifications. As a result, some of the features are not available yet. It does allow for clubs to continue to use their own membership systems and to push their data between the club and Foireann.
The current data on Foireann has been collected by the GAA from 2 sources:
- Exports from Servasport prior to it being decommissioned.
- Data from last year’s return to play questionnaires.
As a result of this data coming from multiple sources, there are many duplicate records. The GAA have stated we should not attempt to remove or cleanse this data (for data integrity reasons) and have promised a de-duplication capability in the coming weeks. This can mean that there are parts of the system which may confuse members. Hopefully, this page will help explain.
Let’s use My Family as an example through this document. In reality, My Family Membership is Me , My Wife and My 2 Sons. As an administrator on Foireann for St Vincents, if I search for my family I find that Foireann actually has:
- 2 of me. Not sure why, but the other me lives a good 5km from where I am from. One of me has a GAA Id, the other doesn’t
- 0 Of my Wife. This is ok, as she is neither a player nor a supervisor, nor a mentor. So, there’s no reason why should should be registered centrally.
- 3 of my eldest son. Only 1 has a GAA Number
- 3 of my youngest son. Only 1 has a GAA Number
Bear with me on this, as it will help explain some of the issues
One of my family members is marked as not paid even though we paid !
Ok. Don’t Panic. St Vincents are not managing our membership through Foireann. We manage our membership through ClubZap. A player who is marked as not paid on Foireann does not indicate that we have not received payment, nor does it mean they aren’t registered.
Here’s what’s most likely happening; My account has this issue:
When I log into Foireann I’m logging in with the version of me that does not have a GAA Id. So, it looks in that account that I am not registered.
When I view my family for return to play purposes, none of them are the versions of themselves that have a GAA id. So, they also look like they aren’t registered.
For some families, there is no duplication, for some families some of the family have duplicate records, whilst others do not. The latter can be especially confusing because it looks like some of the family are paid up, whilst others are not.
Don’t panic: It is very likely that all is ok. We plan on fixing the data as soon as this feature is available to us.
When I log in to create a return to play questionnaire, it says we have no membership and we should register
Again. Don’t panic. You may see a screen like this one below:
Again, this is likely a data problem. THERE IS NO NEED TO REGISTER. Simply scroll down; There’s a section on Health Questionnaires, and you can still fill them in, resubmit etc. just like last year.
There are much less teams, what team should my child belong in ?
We’ve purposely reduced the number of teams. Last year we had 3 separate “Clubs” in the return to play portal. This reflected that we are part of 3 separate organisations (GAA,LGFA and Camogie Association). Thankfully, Foireann allows us to be a “One Club Club” so we could remove the two extra “Clubs”. This was causing a lot of confusion last year – particularly for juvenile females – who had to make their declarations in different areas depending on whether they were training in Football or Camogie. We also had similar issues where a child would turn up for training, and their covid declaration was not found for (say) U14 football, because the parent had reconfirmed, and this was stored in U14 Hurling.
To alleviate this issue, we’ve made a boys grouping at each year (regardless of whether they are training for hurling or football), and a grouping at each year for girls (regardless of if they are training for Camogie or football). Remember: All we need to be able to do is to make declarations, and for covid supervisors to be able to view the declaration on the night of training. Please ignore the fact that the “activity” for boys is always set to “Football” and the “activity” for Girls is always set to “Camogie”. (we had to pick one when setting up the teams). To try to make this easier to understand, we’ve given the team names like “2006 Boys (U15 2021 Hurling and Football)”
I have another thing in here that is confusing me
I feel your pain. If you want to ask any questions, drop me a mail at [email protected] and I’ll get to it as soon as I can.