Forget the All-Stars, these are the awards that GAA players really want to win.
The Championship returned with a bang at the weekend and with no major football tournament this summer and the Rugby World Cup not taking place until September, Irish sports fans will be going ga-ga for GAA throughout the summer months.
With that in mind, we want to recognise the heroes of both the football and hurling championships and have devised an awards scheme known as the GAA-mys, which will ackowledge the great deeds performed by inter-county GAA players on a weekly basis over the next few months.
Once the GAA-mys become widely recognised and hailed throughout the industry (as we know they will), it is our intention to honour the recipients with a tangible reward that will sit easily alongside an All-Star on the mantlepiece.
Check out this week’s winners below.
The Maurice Fitz award for the score with the most outrageous curl of the week
Brian Kavanagh’s frankly ridiculous swirling effort against Offaly in Tullamore that had so much snow on it, it might as well have been freshly delivered from the North Pole.
As one Twitter user remarked: “It was heading out the road at one stage!”
The ‘business at the back and sides, party up front’ championship haircut of the week award
Galway’s Damien Comer might be a relative newcomer to the inter-county scene, but his respect for age-old GAA traditions was very evident in Carrick-on-Shannon yesterday.
Comer’s ridiculously tight at the sides with plenty left on top haircut was straight out of Page One of the Championship Haircut manual; a shining example to young and aspiring inter-county players on how it’s done.
The GAA shtyle statement of the week
Mickey Quinn’s outstandingly white boots deserve a mention, but this week’s gong has to go to big Neily Gallagher of Donegal, who somewhat unwillingly sported what can only be described as an exaggerrated U-neck against Tyrone in Ballybofey.
That’s the kind of heavage that hipsters can only dream about.
The ‘did he get that from the soccer?’ showboat of the week
Martin McElhinney’s improvised half-volley went really close, but this week’s award has to go to Peter Harte of Tyrone for his dinked pick-up in the same game.
A difficult enough skill at the best of times, it’s even harder to execute at full speed, in wet conditions, when the ball is running away from you and you’ve a gang of bloodthirsty Donegal defenders haring down your neck.
Well played, Peter.
Sign that the GAA is getting soft award
Men like Eoin ‘The Bomber’ Liston and Diarmuid ‘The Rock’ O’Sullivan used to distribute welcoming hand-shakes so firm that their markers wouldn’t go near them for 70 minutes.
Nowadays, fist bumps are the norm. Is there nothing sacred, lads?
Only in the GAA moment of the week
Where else would you get a sign for coffee like this one at the Gaelic Grounds in Drogheda for Louth’s clash with Westmeath? Starbucks how do.
JOE’s Guaranteed Irish Sports’ Star of the Week Award, a tribute to the tradition of incredibly long names for award titles in the GAA
This week, the award goes to Tyrone’s Justin McMahon, for keeping Michael Murphy scoreless from play and for providing what will definitely be one of the GAA photos of the summer.
A small consolation for yesterday Justin but thoroughly deserved.
