Wikipedia:WikiProject Gaelic games/Notability/Sports administrators

The following is an example of how the biography of even a long-serving county board member, with many sources included, can be insufficient to meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline.

In this example, it is possible to intrepret the article as follows: that "the coverage of the online abuse doesn't materially contribute to notability... Otherwise much of the other coverage ('pushed someone', 'issued reports', 'criticised by Ger Loughnane') is more incidental than biographical in nature. And not especially contributory to notability. Certainly no more so than for any other county board member/secretary. Or an administrator in any other sport or organisation or business. (Even the CEO of a multi-million Euro commercial organisation for example would need to have notability independent of that org to warrant their own article.)... Most/all of the coverage is about events that the subject was involved in; Rather than about the subject directly.)"

The above interpretation could led to a delete outcome at Articles for deletion. It might be better to prevent this by working on a biography that meets WP:NGAELIC instead.

Pat Fitzgerald is a Gaelic games administrator who has served as secretary of the Clare County Board since June 1990. He is one of the longest serving administrators in the province of Munster. He is employed full-time, having been offered a contract in 2009 and a renewed contract in 2016.

Fitzgerald is with the Sixmilebridge club. He is the father of Davy, a former Clare hurler and team manager.

Fitzgerald's 1998 annual report stated that hurler Colin Lynch had been subject to a "media witch-hunt" that had contributed to his ban of three months after that year's Munster SHC replay and that video evidence had been used inconsistently throughout the competition, disfavouring Clare. Donie Nealon responded at the Munster Council's convention in February 1999 "that the (Munster) GAC... adopted the very same procedures as it has... in the past with similar referee's reports" and that Lynch's appeal "failed at Croke Park level, and in addition at High Court level also on this occasion when an injunction was sought to prevent our GAC dealing with the matter, all for the very same reasons, i.e., that the council's GAC acted correctly and in a fair and impartial manner in imposing the minimum suspension in accordance with Official Guide rules".

Peter O'Connell, a journalist with The Clare Champion, alleged in 2014 that, "down around the tunnel area" of Cusack Park, Fitzgerald had "forcibly pushed [him] around the corner" and "verbally abused" him after a game, which Fitzgerald denied.

In his 2015 annual report, Fitzgerald criticised "personal attacks" against Clare's hurlers which he wrote were occurring on social media.

Fitzgerald has been the subject of a prolonged Garda investigation into alleged online abuse of him. Fitzgerald's 2019 annual report mentioned this formal complaint and referred to a dossier of social media content which Fitzgerald termed as a form of "character assassination".

Former Clare hurler and team manager Ger Loughnane has criticised Fitzgerald, writing in his column in a national newspaper: "he's done plenty of good work in the past and is still doing good things. But I think he's been there too long and has too much power".