Gaa autobiographies famous
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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
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An Spailpín is flicking through The GAA: A People’s History these evenings, while listening to the spring rain fall outside. It really is a beautiful book. It’s put together in the same style as Diarmuid Ferriter’s Judging Dev – facsimiles of contemporary documents woven in through the main narrative. A lovely addition to the canon.
The canon of GAA books is not as rich as a 125 year history would suggest it might be. There are lots of reasons for that, and we could spend ages talking about them, but one of the biggest problems has to be that Irish people hate, hate, hate going on the record.
The Béaloideas, or oral tradition, is one that suits Irish post-colonial psyche well. And this is why the bubbling brew of the Championship becomes the thin gruel of Official GAA Prose. We like telling stories until the notebook comes out, and then it’s strictly a case of name, rank and serial number, and not one damn thing else.
As such, when a really good GAA book comes along it’s doubly notable. Firstly, because it’s there at all, and adds to a very slim canon, and secondly, like all great literature, it takes on a life of its own to place a sport in its wider context as regards the great world around it.
One of the best GAA books is Breand