Wait goes on for new addition to GAA video game canon

In the modern era, there is more of almost everything and sport is no exception.

There are far more games broadcast across all sports, blogs covering matters in minute detail and there are podcasts on all manner of topics (don’t forget to resume The Echo Sports Podcast when it’s back in 2026).

It would seem to be something of an irony, then, that the number of video-game offerings has dwindled.

Earlier this year, A Tale of Two Halves: The History of Football Video Games by Richard Moss was published; it’s a weighty tome, covering practically every single release across a period of more than four decades.

It serves to illustrate just how the available options have reduced year on year, to the point where EA Sports FC, the successor of the FIFA series, is the only show in town, with eFootball (née Pro Evolution Soccer) trailing way behind. Football Manager 25 was cancelled, though Football Manager 26 did come out in November.

While the major American sports do tend to get the annual update from EA Sports, golf, rugby and cricket are catered for on less-regular basis. In such a landscape, it’s perhaps not surprising that we are now 18 years removed from the last Gaelic games releases.

It was in 2005 that GAA fans first had the chance to buy a game for their PlayStations. With Ireland operating in such a relatively small market, it made sense to a degree for the game engine to be based on another and so IR Gurus, who produced an equivalent Australian rules offering, were the developers.

The finished article was far from perfect – imperfections like the ‘handpass to nobody’ were carried over from the AFL game – but there was something there to work with. The kits and stadiums looked realistic, but the fact that the GPA were not involved meant that there were no real player names or likenesses and that was always going to be too big an obstacle to overcome when going from a standing start.

A 2007 sequel was a bit better, without moving the needle to any notable degree. That was released in tandem with Gaelic Games: Hurling, which, fitting and not wholly surprisingly, proved very hard to master. It didn’t help that there were needless oversights, either: while they were ahead of their time with a one-on-one penalty in hurling, it was a ground shot from the 13m line.

Developing video games is an expensive pursuit and so we can understand why there have not been an efforts in the intervening period to come up with something that is only ever likely to have a limited appeal.

However, given how successful the Championship Manager/Football Manager franchise has been with what was a series of text-based games, one might suggest that a GAA manager game had potential. Again, though, the available evidence suggests not.

The only example we have to go on also came out in 2007 – but the developers, Nenagh-based Tailteann Games, opted to focus only on hurling when all logic would suggest that a football version would have wider appeal to start with.

At a basic level, Bainisteoir: Hurling was simply to tricky to get to grips with – you were more likely to be sacked before the championship began than not. Then, there were too many gimmicky inserts like star players giving up hurling to focus on their careers or to take up the offer of a trial with Celtic; even if such a thing happened in real-life, you’d call up someone from club level but no such player pool existed beyond the county squad.

It would appear that Tailteann Games are no longer in business and so any new initiatives in the field will have to come from elsewhere. Sadly, we won’t be holding our breath.