Introduction to my placement

Hi everyone, my name is Emma Thomas and I am doing my work placement at Perth Football Club, which in case you do not know is a football team in the West Australian Football League (the level below the Australian Football League). So far my placement has been very interesting (and I am not even half way through it yet!), I already feel like I have conducted an array of PR tasks and have been given a lot of responsibility. I have made contributions to the newsletter, written a media release (and am in the process on writing another one) and helped to organise various events. I also took photos and wrote up a story at the Smarter Than Smoking Demons Super Clinic for the club website.

Essentially, there are three people who deal with the PR side of things at Perth. There is the office manager who does a lot of work on the web and organises and compiles the newsletter, (which is distributed online through email) the Promotions Officer (who I work closely with) who is responsible for organising all the events and just generally making sure they run smoothly on the day, and there is the CEO of the sporting club, who has a PR background, and therefore takes care of the media side of things and generally oversees everything (as well as carries out all her other tasks as CEO). It is interesting to see how these roles overlap and become interrelated, especially because of how relatively small the organisation is. This is good for me in terms of experience because it means there is always something for me to do or help out with, it is also beneficial to have a CEO with a PR background because she knows exactly what to give me to do

For such a small organisation in terms of paid staff and promotions in general, Perth Football Club hosts many events and during my time at this placement I have, or will be exposed to a wide range of these. For every Perth home game at Lathlain there is a President’s lunch, which is fundamentally for sponsors and people with special membership’s- for the two games so far turnouts have been at capacity with about 220 people. Perth also hosts the ‘footy on the road’ show which is done by 6PR three times a year and there are various other events such as the Sportsman’s Lunch and the Players Auction.