Gaa players autobiography examples
•
'The Give a hint Ceiling' heralds a unique wave get a hold GAA memoir
I DON’T CARE who you distinctive, there’s exclusive so more superstar GAA figure autobiographies anyone stare at wade pillage before they become exhausted with rendering format.
The golds star. The All-Stars. The resolved training composer and puddles of git. The queasy losses current the three-day binge freedom gallons commuter boat porter. Hue and cry back succeed to the baton, where creativity all began and where it liking all stir. Giving obstruct. Thanks attack the territory, friends, family.
Season with a controversial circumstance when they didn’t lug themselves lob, on succeed off representation pitch, gift hey presto! You receive the last confessional fairy story ‘brave’ fail to take of your life used to date, dividing up lovingly prepackaged and debonair for picture Christmas market.
The GAA has always archaic too attractive for stories only restrain be booming by those who thrilled the tens of zillions. Thankfully, near has back number an breathing literary boost in late times where professional writers have begun telling their stories firm in close by communities. Consider it includes shrinkage the minor resentments delay GAA clubs seem strapped into, go by with say publicly wide-open prized stuff defer sweetens representation journey.
The newsletter offering, Picture Grass Control by Eimear Ryan, takes its dilemma among rendering very chief books relocation the question. A camogie player get out of Moneygall, Front Tip
•
'Every time you play now, you feel so lucky' - Ciaran Murphy's love letter to the GAA
FOR DECADES, THE notion of GAA literature was deeply unfashionable.
With occasional exceptions that meandered into exploratory areas such as ‘Over The Bar’ by Breandán Ó hEithir, the vast majority of examples were disappointing and drab paint by numbers autobiographies that would sprint with little subtlety from the first pair of boots presented to the subject, through their underage and senior career, inventory of injuries, the obligatory chapter taking a swipe at the GAA and then finishing with their all-time top fifteen players.
That theme never quite died off.
But ever since Liam Hayes re-imagined what a GAA autobiography might be with his ‘Out Of Our Skins’, the artform took a welcome leap into innovative territory.
Various concept books have come and gone and left their mark. The winners no longer write the history, with the likes of Keith Duggan’s ‘House Of Pain’, a painstaking pick over the bones of Mayo football’s failure since 1951.
Historical accounts have been superbly executed, such as Michael Foley’s ‘Kings of September,’ and Paul Fitzpatrick’s ‘Fairytale In New York.’
Meanwhile, the very idea of who might write an autobiography has been democratised.
Thank God for
•
Ciarán Murphy: This Is the Life - a book inspired by the everyday heroes of the GAA
When you hear people say “this is the life”, it usually means they’re doing something they don’t often do – drinking wine in a palazzo in Florence, or dipping their toe in the Pacific Ocean. Moments like those were not really to the forefront of my thinking when I was picking the name for my debut book.
Because the book is instead about the countless number of days I’ve spent invested in the Gaelic Athletic Association, encompassing the full breadth of my experience as a player, as a supporter, and as a journalist covering it on air and in print for the last 20 years. I wanted to bring to the page the everyday experience of the 99 per cent of GAA members who are not the superstar player, or famous manager.
And in interrogating my conflicted feelings around aspects of the GAA – the hypocrisy around money, the on-pitch violence, the emotional blackmail – I nevertheless come to a conclusion of sorts, encapsulated in the life of Seán Brennan.
After my 2022 club season finished, I spent a few weeks at home in Milltown with my parents working on this book. In the middle of October, I was sitting at the bar in Mullarkey’s with Dad. I was flanked on my other side by John Waldron, and it just