TV company seeks GAA fans to view family fortunes on the field

Michael Moynihan

Is there a big match coming up that you and your family are preparing for? Is your child a future GAA star? If so, contact Stopwatch Productions."

Kathriona Devereux of Stopwatch explained the advertisement.

"We make the RTÉ series Meet The Family, and this year want to focus on one that's involved in sport.

"They don't have to be a GAA family necessarily we'd be interested in all sports. If a family is involved in soccer or sailing or anything in between we're interested in talking to them.

"We're looking for a family that's totally involved in the sport, for example the parents ferrying kids to practice and games. Ideally you'd have the children involved at different age levels, but it's not as if they all have to be superstars so long as they're all dedicated to their sport."

Series producer Mary Murphy expands on the idea.

"Even though GAA is mentioned in the advertisement, we're not necessarily married to that idea irrevocably. The idea is to follow a family over a summer, and obviously GAA is the major sport in Ireland during the summer months.

"In addition, GAA sports are family-oriented sports. They're not the only ones. We're really searching for a good story with the family last year, for example, we followed a family of showjumpers all the way to the Dublin Horse Show, and it was really interesting to see how much time they spent on the road that summer."

Murphy says the family won't have cameras in their home all summer.

"The family wouldn't feature across the series they'd feature in one week's episode. We'd visit them on a few occasions over the summer to see how they're getting on. It certainly isn't a Big Brother set-up, the show goes out at 7pm, it's family viewing."