No beer! Aussies can’t believe dedication of GAA stars like Brendan Maher

Tipperary hurling captain Brendan Maher has revealed how professional cricketers in Australia were shocked to learn alcohol bans are regularly placed on GAA players.

Tue, 08 Mar, 2016 - 00:00

Paul Keane

All-Ireland medallist Maher took part in AIB’s The Toughest Trade documentary where he swapped codes with a cricketer and spent a week with the Adelaide Strikers.

He said his new colleagues were taken aback when he explained GAA players don’t get paid. And he said they were even more surprised many must abstain from alcohol for vast stretches of the season.

“I had a few conversations about different things, about the way it is in the GAA and the way it is for them,” said Maher. “One thing came up, that they would have a few beers after each game, even there was a barbecue before the game and they were all there with their coach having the few beers.

“I said, ‘there’s no way we’d do this in the GAA. If you even had a beer two or three months before a game you’d nearly be lambasted for it’.

“They were like, ‘what?!’ They were saying, ‘would you really not take a drink after games?’ I said, ‘only after Championship games maybe or something like that’. I was telling them that’s the norm back home and they couldn’t believe the dedication that’s given and how much we train. I was going through my typical week and they were saying, ‘you train that much!’”

Maher said, personally, he probably wouldn’t drink much during the season anyhow. But he insisted he should be allowed to simply enjoy a soft drink in a bar without being quizzed about it.

“It would kind of annoy you that you could be in a pub having a Lucozade and someone comes up and says, ‘what are you doing here?’ You’re kind of going, ‘well, I’m just here with my friends, can I not be here for an hour, like?!’

“That’s the kind of stuff that would annoy you, you can’t even be seen out in a social setting with your friends, even though you’re just sitting there with a sparkling water. You’re told, ‘you shouldn’t be out’ or ‘you shouldn’t be here’. It could be half nine on a Friday night. You would get that quite a bit.”

Maher said one thing he took from training with the professional outfit was GAA training is, ironically, often taken too seriously.

“I think in most GAA teams, training is very serious and it’s almost like you can’t laugh or you can’t smile nearly,” Maher said. “I just noticed in the warm ups for their training it was all laughing and joking, it was really relaxed and everyone was laughing and I was thinking, ‘maybe we should have that approach a bit more in the GAA’.”

Maher revealed how the cricket players couldn’t get their heads around the small number of Championship games that hurlers play.

“I was talking about the way we’d only have a Championship game every three or four weeks, or five weeks sometimes,” said Maher. “They were saying it was so much training for so few games. The way the Big Bash is in cricket, it’s a game every five or six days. I’d love that set up. Their season is something like eight weeks, they play seven games, a semi-final and a final.”