Anyone who watched last week’s Toughest Summer documentary on RTÉ cannot fail to have been moved at some point on how the GAA as an organisation and as a thread linking so many individuals found its strength over the course of the Covid-19 lockdown.
The show was the endpiece of a series of mini-documentaries released on social media through the summer and created as part of AIB’s activation of its Club and County sponsorships.
Apart from setting a very high bar in terms of the quality of activation, it has also painted an ever clearer picture of a hybrid form of programming around sport that will impact on media for longer than the virus is around.
Ten years ago sport was 99 per cent about the live experience. Ireland has long liked the idea of smart analysis and commentary. Many will find it unusual that in many countries across Europe and wider afield there is no panel discussion after a game, just cut away to the next programme after the final whistle.
Netflix
Now with Netflix and Amazon Prime producing documentaries of the highest quality and with major audience reach, the appetite to know more, to see more and to understand better the pre and the post-match experience is ever more in the mainstream.
The Toughest Summer was directed by Ross Whitaker, a filmmaker with serious credentials and he has been speaking following the release of the show
“A big element of the GAA is the fact that the players are amateurs and they have jobs so what happens when you’re a GAA star and the sport is taken away from you but also your livelihood is taken away from you,” he said.
“We wanted to look at that and we wanted to see are there any players coming towards the end of their career who are looking at this as a kind of a year lost.”
Reins
“We wanted a manager who had maybe taken up the reins of a team and then suddenly had that taken away. Somebody who wasn’t able to give the messages anymore to their players to help them improve and have a good season.”
“So, we had these broad areas that we wanted to look at and then we started researching what stories were out there.”
“One of the things I always find amazing about doing documentaries is you write down these wish lists and then actually you often find stories even better than the ones you imagined. That’s kind of how we started out the process of casting for want of a better word.”
“I was talking to one of the people that was involved in this project the other day and he was saying “you couldn’t write some of the things that real people say” and that’s what’s so interesting about documentary.”
“You know you couldn’t write things that David Brady said. He was one of the former GAA stars that picked up the phone and rang fans, particularly cocooning fans and just talked GAA. You come across those kinds of stories and you see the impact they’ve had not just on the person that has received a phone call but the person that has made the phone call and how real those interactions are.”
Momentum
“It just begins to build its own momentum there and that’s kind of across the board. So, you kind of have an idea of what you’re looking for and then you start to find those stories and then people surprise you once you delve into how they feel about the whole thing.”
“I’m always positive about humanity but one of the things that’s kind of special about this particular documentary is hopefully people realise and I realised to a certain extent that we have a real gem in the GAA.”
“What would the country be without it? It may not be for everyone you know, and nothing is ever for everyone, but it certainly does a lot for a lot of people.”
“I suppose in an era where the church has lost so much of it’s kind of stranglehold over the country the GAA club has become the one constant of many communities and people need to have something at the central community to gravitate towards.”
It’s a very special show, a great way for AIB to have ‘saved’ their sponsorship for 2020’s strangest summer and a testament to the GAA that will stand the ravages of time.
You can watch the full documentary back here…
