Teamwork was key for Limerick Leader staff over busy election weekend

BETWEEN astronomically-high step counts, a locked wine fridge on the county count floor, an elderly gentleman being helped to find his car in the wee hours, and, of course, all of the victory hoists, the live rolling coverage on the Limerick Live website kept readers up to date on every twist and turn in the three Limerick elections.

The ‘live’ button was pressed on the live blog at 12 noon on Saturday after boxes were emptied and just like the count staff, the Limerick Leader team were off to the races.

It was a hectic weekend with the team starting at 8am each day and working into the early hours of the morning - 1am and 2am - but we were in good company with counters, council staff and our media colleagues sticking it out to the end.

The count for the county districts and mayoral election took place on the second floor of Limerick Racecourse in Patrickswell where seasoned reporters Donal O’Regan and Sandra Quinn burrowed down for the weekend.

On the bottom floor, count staff totted up the votes for the city districts as reporter and political commentator Nick Rabbitts and reporter Faye Dorgan leaped into action every time a polling officer approached a microphone.

Once the 40 councillors were elected to the local authority then the time came for the mayoral election. It was all hands on deck as the Leader team came together to make sure we were providing the most up to date figures as Limerick made history.

Steering the ship on site was Limerick Leader / Limerick Live managing editor Aine Fitzgerald and news editor Jerome O'Connell with help from David Hurley, Iconic Media Group, Frances Fitzpatrick, digital lead with Limerick Leader / Limerick Live, and Charles Prashaw on layout and design, working remotely.

Some might say we had a backroom team stronger than the Limerick hurlers. We left the quadruple-decker bus at home for this one and travelled by car - although by the weary heads on some of us on Tuesday morning, some thought we had slept on the floor of the racecourse overnight.

If you saw any of our election coverage over the weekend then you would have seen hundreds of pictures taken by our photographer Adrian Butler who was snapping photos non-stop over the four days.

Of course, he captured the jubilant moments of election but he also got some endearing behind-the -scenes shots of councillors celebrating quietly with their loved ones, and young children cheering on their mums and dads as they were elected.

READ MORE: PICTURES: Celebrations following historic election of John Moran as Mayor of Limerick

One of the most popular photos shared on our Instagram page was of possibly the youngest attendees on count day, twins Robbie and Jack Staunton who gave the tired reporters a reason to smile as the evening rolled in on Sunday.

If you were following the individual posts on our live blog (just short of 700 of them over the four days) that provided on-the-button updates from the counts, you will have seen many contributions from UL journalism student Abigail Hayden who, although having just started her co-op placement last week, took to the election beat like a duck to water.

The live blog was the go-to place for all the serious data, the post-election interviews, the jubilant shoulder-high hoisting photos and the quirkier little titbits such as the obstructing cars in the car park, the match delay in Semple Stadium, the food on the menu in the count centre restaurant, the youngest observers watching from their prams and even the hand gestures favoured by the joyous, just-elected councillors.

As soon as word reached the media den that an announcement was imminent microphones were grabbed and teams of two got into position to record the joyous moments with the new councillors for www.limericklive.

Then it was a sprint back to the desk to write up the reaction from the candidates after their election.

Over the space of 24 hours, a total of 40 of these council election stories were published, with in the region of 200 articles, slideshows and video stories published across the four days.

In terms of figures, Limerick Live was viewed in the region of 1.1 million times from Saturday morning to close of business on Tuesday night with readers keeping up to date with the action from as near as Patrickswell to as far away as Perth, Australia.

In fact our coverage was so enthralling, we had readers tuning in from 143 countries all over the world including 700 people in Norway, more than 1,000 logged on in Australia, dozens got involved in the Philippines and even a few folks from Kazakhstan were interested.

From social media engagement to website views, we are proud to have played some part in an election for the history books.