Fame – without the fortune

‘Celebrity’ is a label that doesn’t sit comfortably with most GAA players, regardless of the public and media interest during the summer months.

While we share the sports pages with Premier League and Heineken Cup stars, GAA players exist in a starkly contrasting reality. Glamour and the GAA are not comfortable bed-fellows, so when we find ourselves spoken about in celebrity terms, it can be a bit, well, cringeworthy.

George Clooney is a ‘celebrity’; we aren’t. Finance is the obvious partition. GAA players are more hatchback than coupe, more Next than Armani, more Casio than Tag Heuer. But that said, thanks to ever increasing media exposure and the social media revolution, inter-county stars are finding themselves in the spotlight more than ever. So that got me thinking… Are we maybe a tad naive in thinking that we don’t tick a few of the celebrity checklist boxes?