Pirates of the Sunday Game - Hollywood stars in frame to play Galway legend!

The story of a rogue entrepreneur from Co Galway who made a small fortune importing pirated copies of ‘The Sunday Game’ to the south east of England in the 1980s could yet be turned into a major feature film starring Aidan Quinn or Gabriel Byrne.

Film-maker Kevin Byron Murphy, who produced the acclaimed ‘Song for a Raggy Boy’ ten years ago, came up with the idea of making a full-length feature about Killimor native Ambrose Gordon after hearing a documentary on RTE Radio One over Christmas.

Murphy met with Gordon, who runs the Man of Aran pub in Harrow, in Ireland this week and believes that a feature film about the Killimor man’s exploits in the 1980s could be made for about €1.3 million.

Murphy has suggested that Quinn or Byrne could play the leading role although Gordon – rarely known for his modesty – has suggested that Brad Pitt or Colin Farrell might be best suited to the role. “Because that’s who I was like, going around in the 1980s,” he said this week.

From 1982 to 1989, Gordon ran a small ‘cottage industry’ on either side of the Irish Sea during the GAA championship summers.

Ambrose came up with the idea of running a business after a customer arrived into a pub in Kentish Town on a Monday night with a video of the previous day’s All-Ireland Hurling final between Offaly and Galway in September 1981. The whole pub sat down to watch the programme.

He would fly to London, stay with his brother in Dublin and record two copies of the ‘Sunday Game’ on home video recorders. The show was unavailable to the huge Irish community in Britain at the time.

Gordon would then fly back to London on a Monday morning, put 20 VHS recorders into action, and produce over 115 copies of the tapes within hours.

See full story in this week's Connacht Tribune.