GAELIC SPORTS WORLD Issue 21 – March 14, 2015 | Page 44

THE TOUGHEST SPORT
AIB breaks new ground this week with a specially commissioned documentary airing on TV3 about whether or not the
GAA Club Championships are, as their branding suggests,
#TheToughest.
The hour long show adds to the growing rich vein of sports
documentaries breaking through to a mainstream audience.
It follows in the tradition of the ESPN 30 for 30 series of individual stories that have brought the new genre to life.
The normal wisdom was that all sport was about the live
coverage but now that this has reached such a level of saturation, and shown no signs of stopping, the back story of those
involved has become fair game for TV broadcasters and in the
online environment.
The show at 10pm will be available to watch afterwards on
both the TV3 Player and the AIB GAA You Tube Channel.
The programme is based on the premise of two GAA players trading places with Brian Scheider at the Miami Marlins
Baseball team and David Bentley at Sunderland Football Club
in the English Premier League.
Jackie Tyrell of James Stephens in Kilkenny is swapping hurl
for bat while Aaron Kernan is moving from Crossmaglen to
the Stadium of Light, albeit only on a temporary basis.
The Pro stars have to live the life as well taking on a part time
substitutes role in each of their ‘host’s’ workplace environments. This means Schneider worked as a sales development
manager with Glanbia, which will do no harm to the image of
that brand in the US if the show is picked up there, and Bentley worked for the Kernan property lettings business.
Schneider is on record as saying that hurling skills could

44

readily be transferred to the big money environment of pro
baseball. He played across the Major Leagues and in 2005
caught the first pitch at the new Washington Nationals franchise. The pitch was thrown by then US President George W
Bush.
“With its predominantly winter schedule, the constant pressure of knockout matches, having to balance the demands of
family, work or college with training and playing matches,
and of course, the fact that some of the biggest names in GAA
haven’t won a club medal, we believe that the AIB GAA Club
Championships really is the toughest of them all,” said AIB
Brand Director Brian Keating.
“With this film, what we wanted to investigate was, could the
GAA club game actually be the toughest in the world?
“David and Brian will be part of the parish; they will train
with the club and play in a challenge match with a rival club,
as well as work day jobs. They’ll find out just how tough it is to
live and train as a GAA club player.
“And given we often have a lot of preconceptions about the
lives of professional athletes, it’s going to be very interesting to
see how both Jackie and Aaron get on with their new clubs.”
It promises to be a riveting show, matching recent documentaries on RTE by Jacqui Hurley and Hector O’hEochagáin,
and is perfectly timed ahead of the AIB GAA Club Finals on
St. Patricks Day next Tuesday.
Rob Hartnett is the Founder of Sport for Business, an Irish
network of sporting and business leaders working together to
forge links between their two communities. He is a fan of Dublin GAA and an active member of Cuala GAA club in Dalkey.
Sport for Business www.sportforbusiness.com