AIB is to repeat it’s specially commissioned documentary charting the way in which GAA stars from the AIB GAA Club Championships can adapt to playing in others ports, and vice versa.
The show will air in advance of the Club Finals in March and the players taking part will be revealed over the coming weeks. So too will the channel to carry the broadcast which went out last year on TV3 but may be switching in year two.
First up though is Tipperary hurling captain Brendan Maher who is swapping ash for willow by training with the Adelaide Strikers in Australia as they prepare for the Big Bash tournament.
“I’m under no illusions that this is going to be really hard,” said the 27-year-old former Young Hurler of the Year.
“I’m expecting a massive challenge, but I have no expectations of how many balls I’m going to hit.
“I’m just going to go out and try to do as best I can; try and adapt to whatever I have to face.”
Maher is Down Under for a week as part of filming for the documentary and they have released a short video starting to chart his progress and shared through Facebook where the Brand Sponsorship team around the GAA has 78,000 likes, almost as many as would fill Croke Park on an All Ireland Final day.
Last year’s film featured Kilkenny hurler Jackie Tyrrell, retired Armagh star Aaron Kernan, former England soccer international David Bentley and baseball great Brian Schneider and now Maher is in front of the cameras.
He is currently getting ready to face some of the quickest fast bowlers on the planet, who send balls down the wicket as quickly as 140km/h.
While he admits that this is a scary prospect, he says it’s an incredible opportunity for a hurler from Ireland and an amateur athlete.
“There are not too many lads who can say they got an opportunity to do something like this. To get the chance to go and have a go at it is probably once in a lifetime, said Maher.
“Naturally, I would be very competitive and I probably will end up putting a bit of pressure on myself, but I can’t get bogged down in ‘I have to do this, I have to do that’. I just want to do the best I can.”
Brian Keating, AIB Group Brands Director commented “We’ve long believed that the AIB GAA Club Championships could be the toughest sporting tournament in the world.”
“Last year in our debut documentary, our participants agreed that the fitness and commitment expected of our amateur players was on par with those playing professionally in the Premier League and Major League” continued Keating.
“This year with ‘The Toughest Trade’ AIB wants to delve deeper into the preconceptions and realities of amateur and professional sport, to once again prove that leading Irish amateur sports people can excel in new and different sporting disciplines.”
