GAA players across the land are about to be issued with guidelines warning them over the consequences of what they have to say on social media networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Plenty of Gaelic Footballers and hurlers have taken to Twitter in particular with gusto in recent months, amassing thousands of followers who are given a greater insight into life as an inter-county player and what they get up to away from the pitch.
While increasing access to players is undoubtedly a positive development, players are to be warned that a few loose comments over the Twittersphere will be devoured by hungry media outlets (ourselves included, of course) in search of a story and that they might need to be a little more responsible in future.
The GAA are set to publish a detailed list of social media guidelines over the next two months and former President Nickey Brennan, now head of the GAA’s IT comm-it-tea, told The Irish Examiner he hopes that the guidelines will be taken on board by players.
“The GAA can’t control everybody, there’s no way. You can’t just be watching people every hour of the day. That’s not humanly possible,” he said.
“We’re hoping that people will take on board the guidelines – a lot of work has been invested into preparing them – and be careful of what they do.
“The reality is if they misbehave in that space it’s not the GAA that is going to be dealing with it; it’s going to hit the media and be about the embarrassment that it causes.
“The GAA wants to make it clear that ‘we’ll give you guidelines but we expect you to be responsible in how you use social media’.”
While care must be taken by players on what is becoming an increasingly popular medium amongst the association members, we would hope that they don’t go overboard and abandon the Twitter machine altogether.
So far, there has been no Joey Barton like-character in the GAA dominating timelines with controversial comments and as long as it stays that way, any unnecessary fuss should be avoided.
