Getting in to PA team has in the past normally been more about who you know rather than what you know. Support team always seemed to be the easier route in to PA team in my eyes. If you did enough sucking up and became friends with the right PA team members they would suggest your promotion without bothering to think about whether you could actually do the job to any decent standard. Once you were in PA team it was a pretty easy ride. Nobody really hassled you to do stuff and unless you broke a rule you were never going to be kicked out for lazyness. That tended to mean the majority of the work within PA team was done by the few members that cared about the good of the game rather than the 'fame' that goes with being PA team.
I've no idea what PA team is like these days but by the sounds of this new department its pretty much the same. They always used to make up new job titles just to justify someones position.
Edit:
I typed this an hour ago and forgot to press post
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