Could GAA tweets become as bland as soccer ones?

Two months ago, The Daily Telegraph produced a brilliant piece on the lifelessness of Premier League footballers’ social media activity around matches. More often than not perfunctory, bland, and regularly worded

and/or sent by the players’ representatives who are responsible for their Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts, they symbolise how the game at its elite level has lost so much of its soul.

Of course, there are exceptions like post-match celebrations where the public is brought inside the dressing room but then they can often be misguided.

The article nailed the seemingly uniform approach taken by clubs to encourage their players to perform pre-match rallying calls, as hollow as they may be.

The players’ social media presence has also been used to placate supporters in the wake of bad results by acknowledging the defeat but talking up the next game as an opportunity to make amends.

The most hilarious case of such came in 2016 when Victor Anichebe included in his tweet the direction he was given by the Sunderland media department: “Can you tweet something like... Unbelievable support yesterday and great effort by the lads! Hard result to take! But we go again!”

Tweet of the year from Victor... pic.twitter.com/p3bXkqoXvC

— Paddy Power (@paddypower) October 23, 2016

Inter-county GAA players’ tweets can’t be viewed so cynically but it would be naive to think they are not moving in that direction.

Almost gone are the days of MJ Tierney hashtagging disillusioned after not getting game-time in 2011 or former Wexford footballers Anthony Masterson and Adrian Flynn lambasting referees Derek Fahy and Anthony Nolan. With the threat of suspension hanging over their heads, the latter pair had to apologise for their actions.

It’s rare now that you see a player as careless as ex-Meath goalkeeper Paddy O’Rourke making a crass remark about Diarmuid Connolly or Kilkenny players attempting to persuade Tommy Walsh out of his house to join in another day of toasting their All-Ireland title in 2015.

How the exuberance of Gaoth Dobhair’s recent Ulster final celebrations spilled out onto Twitter made for great viewing.

There were elements of that in how Limerick reacted to their historic All-Ireland title but given the relatively little number of followers several of them have they didn’t make much waves.

Public online banter, particularly between hurlers, remains and there is the joie-de-vivre of the Carlow footballers as much as their offerings are an oasis in a desert of banality.

As is the case in most situations, where Dublin lead others follow, and their Twitter offerings in the main are mundane regardless of 12 of the starting All-Ireland final team having a presence on the platform.

That’s not withstanding the sterling charity work they, as other teams, promote but their determination to avoid providing any insight is so obvious that it’s impressive.

The closest one came to opposing the new experimental rules was Brian Fenton who liked a tweet suggesting an earlier version of the kick-out rule could be interpreted as anti-Dublin only for him to later give a more diplomatic answer in a press interview.

Scan Ciarán Kilkenny’s posts through the year and there is barely a mention of how Dublin played or what they achieved in 2018.

Their media handler has an influence as would the media training they and other inter-county players would be provided by the GPA but this great team are at the stage now where they appreciate the power of silence.

Con O’Callaghan is one of those Dublin players not on Twitter and as he said last month: “We try to keep it within ourselves and stay off social media. We try to stay together as a group, particularly when the games are getting big and there’s lots of people talking from outside.”

As Jim Gavin’s plans get underway for another tilt at the All-Ireland in 2019 (five-in-a-row won’t be mentioned), he can rest assured his players won’t be distracted.

He certainly does his bit, scheduling much of their commercial activities before or delaying it until after the Championship. Given the attention on them next year, he may even consider a blanket ban on any such work during their campaign while ordering a similar approach be taken to social media.

But just in case they and any other inter-county player want a foolproof post-match tweet, we have taken a leaf out of The Telegraph’s book and provided the GAA version of how to post like an inter-county player (see main image).