Jason Murnane is the Communications & Publications Manager, for the Australian Football League Players' Association (AFLPA). But more than that he's a veteran Slicer, an avid reader, Collingwood support, rockin' Dad and cous cous eater! Right now he's working on a youth homelessness initiative with AFL players so listen up and read on...
You work for the AFL Players Association. How do you land that kinda gig?
What, other than being brilliant? No seriously, it’s about identifying where you would most like to be, throw in a little persistence, combine with a healthy dose of keeping your ears to the ground and voila. Working in the AFL industry is something a lot of people aspire to, but like Ron Barassi says, “if it is to be, it is us up to me.”
What are some of the key communication messages the AFLPA are working on right now?
At the moment we are doing a lot of work with ‘Ladder’ – a youth homelessness initiative, created by the AFL Players’ Association and AFL Foundation to help tackle youth homelessness. The idea is not to solve youth homelessness – Bob Hawke gave that a go and well, he came a bit of a cropper. It’s more about bringing the AFL industry’s pressure to bear on an issue that really shouldn’t exist in such a great country as ours. The initiative has seen the launch of two sites, one in Adelaide the other in inner Melbourne which will see the housing, mentoring and training of young people living at the site – all driven by AFL players.
Is the AFLPA using social media tools to assist with communication strategies?
We do. With much of our membership under 25 we use social media, such as your Facebook and Twitter et al, as they provide us with tremendous opportunities to get our message out to our members, but also to engage directly with the wider community, free from the on occasional negativity from some of our friends in the paid media.
Tell us something about the AFL players association we would find surprising...
We are not a department of the AFL and we’ve been around since 1974 - 35 years strong.
What has been your personal career highlight so far?
Working with and learning from a wide variety of really great people.
Have you found monitoring the media changes the way you communicate with the media?
Yes and no. The AFL industry is so driven by the 24 / 7 media cycle that it’s hard for some, sometimes to see the forest for the trees – to live and die by the media cycle. What’s a front page headline for a day disappears without a trace by the following day. With the growth of 24 hours sport news, there’s been a great tendency by some to concentrate solely on being first with the news, at the expense of being accurate. With well over 1,000 journalists’ accredited to cover AFL football (way more than cover Federal Politics), it’s a competitive gig – one I don’t envy.
Why Slice over other monitoring services?
The simplicity and cost effectiveness of the service.
Right now I'm:
Reading...
A lot of football journalism, good – (Martin Flanagan, Tim Lane, Rob Murphy) and bad. Fiction wise Cormac McCarthy (again and again), Peter Carey, Ben Okri, Richard Flanagan and many others but on the bed side table at the moment its a book called Standard Operating Procedure – a cold eyed first hand account of what happened at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and what occurs when a country’s military loses sight of what its’ supposed to be fighting for
Eating....
Cous Cous salad with chicken, sultanas and cashews
Listening...
Heaps of stuff – Bon Iver, Scud Mountain Boys, The Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth, The Black Keys, The Middle East, AC/DC, plus my mighty Collingwood game calls on good old ABC 774 radio
Planning...
On getting to the beach, one day
Buying...
Trying to save (thanks Kevin07)
Enjoying....
My life with my beautiful two girls and partner
Media monitoring
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