EARLY SUMMER and Tipperary referee Paddy Russell is in Parnell Park to shoot a television commercial for Vodafone. Players from Dublin, Meath and Mayo are there too, as is Paul Galvin, the new Kerry captain and the man widely tipped to lift the Sam Maguire trophy come September.
Russell and Galvin shoot a scene together; they spend a morning tossing a coin and shaking hands, simulating a ritual they would play out for real four days later in Killarney's Fitzgerald Stadium. That ritual prefaces the first round of the Munster championship. Kerry are playing Clare and Galvin, a footballer with a reputation for playing on the edge, ends up getting two yellow cards, followed by a red.
Galvin erupts, he slaps the notebook from Russell's hand, raves at a linesman and throws off the restraining hand of team-mate Tomás Ó Sé before taking his leave. One moment, one flash and the story of the summer is made.
Paddy Russell has been here before. Over the course of a long career as an intercounty referee, he has not so much courted controversy as found himself repeatedly plunged into it and this, ultimately, is what makes Final Whistle: the Paddy Russell Story, written with Jackie Cahill, the standout GAA book of the year.
From the All-Ireland football final of 1995, when Charlie Redmond refused to leave the field on being sent off, through to the Battle of Omaghin 2006 and the Paul Galvin affair of last summer, Russell offers a rare insight into what it is like to be an intercounty referee caught in the eye of a media storm. This is an honest account by a serious individual who still bristles at the memory of criticism that has occasionally been levelled at him by players, journalists and, in particular, the armchair pundits in TV studios.
But the book is structured so as to allow voices other than Russell's their say as well: players, linesmen, umpires and fellow referees contribute throughout, yet it is Russell's wife, Margaret, who adds most with the candour of her account of the impact of her husband's other career on family life.
For referees at Russell's level, the occasional controversy is of course an occupational hazard; for Cork hurlers, however, it is a constant.
Michael Moynihan's Blood Brothers: The Inside Story of the Cork Hurlers 1996-2008is an entertaining account of the rise and fall and rise and fall of the Cork senior hurling team over the last dozen years. The book makes no pretence to be an objective account: it is driven by a series of interviews with the players. There is little analysis of their views and still less dissent.
There is enough in the book to confirm the opinions of those already partial to either camp. Their supporters will see the players as brave, devoted to hurling and committed, above all else, to winning All-Irelands. Their opponents will see in this pursuit of success the spectre of money, self-obsession and the loss of perspective that is so typical of elite athletes.
What this book lacks is a second volume which gives the inside story as told by the county board. That would allow the body of opinion in the centre which has swung one way and then the next during the strikes of the last six years to form an educated view of right and wrong. Or maybe Michael Moynihan could ghost Frank Murphy's autobiography?
The best hurling book this year is Hurling: The warrior game by Diarmuid O'Flynn. It is a timely reminder that no generation has a monopoly on excellence or on the pursuit of excellence.
O'Flynn conducted interviews with many of the top hurlers over the last 50 years. He chose between four or five players for each of the 15 positions on the field and asked questions about the qualities those hurlers feel are vital to being a success in their part of the field.
O'Flynn asked about the best advice the players had been given over the years and the advice which they would give to others. Best of all, he asked about the most useful tricks that they had used over the years, or the tricks that they had seen used.
The upshot of this is a treasure-trove of advice (organised by position) for anyone aspiring to play hurling, or even to better understand the game. When the great Cork full forward Ray Cummins is asked where a full forward should stand in relation to his marker he replies: "I hope I never stood . . . You keep moving, keep him guessing as to where you are, where you're going to turn up next."
Bravery and a willingness to get stuck in are constants. Johnny Dooley from Offaly says the best advice he got came from his father: "He'd always say to me, even before a big game in Croke Park, 'Get in you now today and pull your hurl.' He'd have the hairs standing on the back of my neck going out."
John Power from Kilkenny offered similar advice for those standing under a high ball. "Go with the hand or go with the 36 inches (the hurley). And in either case, don't spare the body, yours or his!"
Underpinning everything is the commitment to work hard. As Clare's Brian Lohan put it: "If you feel you have that extra bit of work done, then come the big day you're going to be able to fall back on that. You're not going to be beaten by someone who has less work done than you."
One thing that might be said of John Scally's The Best of the West: GAA Greats of Connachtis that it is a labour of love. A beautifully produced work, filled with an array of striking press photographs, the book takes the form of a series of interviews with or about great players whose careers span decades and whose stories hold a mirror up to the changing face of the GAA and the wider society.
Where Scally draws heavily on the past and the experiences of others, Daire Whelan roots his book, A Year with the Dubs, firmly in the contemporary setting of his own life. A journalist and author of a fine book on the demise of domestic soccer, Who Stole Our Game?, published in 2006, Whelan here turns diarist as he lets us into the world of an obsessive Dublin football fan.
The problem for Whelan is that his year with the Dubs is one where they fail to deliver anything out of the ordinary and almost 200 pages in, he acknowledges as much himself: "So far for us Dubs it's been too quiet a summer."
And that's just it: with so little to write about, Whelan is left to fill up his diary with commentary on everything from the shrinking economy, to TV rights and the tribunal travails of Bertie.
The book works best when Whelan turns the analysis on himself when he contemplates whether his devotion to Sundays on Hill 16 is really sign of arrested development. It's not quite GAA Fever Pitch, but there will doubtless be Dublin supporters who will see themselves reflected in aspects of Whelan's story.
Paul Rouse and Mark Duncan are co-founders of the InQuest research group and directors of the GAA Oral History Project, based at Boston College-Ireland.
Final Whistle: The Paddy Russell Story, Jackie Cahill, Mainstream Press, €17.99
Blood Brothers, The Inside Story of the Cork Hurlers 1996-2008, Michael Moynihan, Gill McMillan. €16.99.
Hurling: The Warrior Game, Diarmuid O'Flynn, Collins Press, €24.99
The Best of the West: GAA Greats of Connacht, John Scally, Collins Press, €24.95
A Year with the Dubs, Daire Whelan, Gill and McMillan, €13.99
