Camanachd Association Chief Operating Officer Torquil MacLeod gave an end of season interview when he spoke to Cuillin FM on a range of matters on Saturday 23 December 2011.
Speaking to Saturday Sports Show presenter Drew Millar, Torquil MacLeod spoke of his aims for next season which are set out in the Camanachd’s Association’s new three year Strategic Plan.
MacLeod explained, “The Strategic Plan has given us a very clear focus for next season. We have branded this up as “Raising Our Standards” and over the next three years, until April 2014, we are looking to raise the standards across the sport as a whole. It’s not just about standards of play; it’s also about standards of officiating, standards of coaching and standards of administration.”
“The Strategic Plan has a general theme of raising the standards within the sport and there are three aspects sitting beneath that.”
“One aspect is participation within the sport which is not just about people playing shinty; it is about participation in officiating, participating in coaching and participating in volunteering.”
“The second aspect is about improving performance and again this is about improving the performance of players, officials, coaches and club volunteers and improving the performance of us as administrators too.”
“The third aspect is about strengthening our infra-structure. At the end of last season we saw how frail our infra-structure is in terms of facilities where we were struggling to get games on as soon as the weather closed in. We want to do something pro-active about that.”
“It is not just about facilities, it is also about the competition structure itself. That is a key aspect of our infra-structure and there is a commitment that we will do a comprehensive review of the competitions structure during the forth-coming playing season. So by the end of 2012, we should have had a fairly comprehensive consultation and review of the playing structure and be in a position to take proposals forward to a General Meeting in advance of the 2013 playing season. These proposals will detail how the competition structure might be improved and possibly changed for the 2014 playing season.”
“So that is a commitment within the Strategic Plan and we will be setting up a Working Group to start working on that before the 2013 playing season starts. We will have hopefully made some decisions about how our competitions structure is going to look in 2014.”
“There’s a lot to do but it is all positive. It’s about keeping the game evolving and the Strategic Plan gives us a clear focus of what we are going to prioritise over the next three years. We break that down into an annual operational plan of what we are going to do this year, what we are going to do next year and the year after and when you add it all up, we should achieve the targets set in the three year Strategic Plan.”