stretching and straining during a work-out with his physical therapist . . . it seems a revision of the traditional GAA players' image may be underway.

Heated discussions about O hAilpin's body took on a life of their own over Ireland's airwaves and in the papers this week. It may have helped that he was topless in the photograph, his physique placing him somewhere between Adonis and He-Man.

While previously unknown for their sexy marketability, our gaelic stars are now making the owners of model agencies sit up and take notice. "GAA has a huge following, so there's no reason why they shouldn't be treated just as the rugby stars are regarding endorsements, " said Rebecca Morgan, owner of Morgan The Agency, a management agency for models.

"I'm sure I do have a load of guys on the books who play GAA, though they wouldn't be the top players. . .

but I would have no objection to it."

Gerard Hartmann . . . the worldrenowned trainer who brought O hAilpin to his current physical level at his Sports Injury Clinic in Limerick . . . believes the hurler is a nearperfect human speciman.

"Personally I think Sean Og is the best physical speciman in GAA . . . he is the closest to being the supreme athlete, " he said.

Hartmann should know, having worked with Carl Lewis, Michael Johnson and Lance Armstrong, among other world-class athletes.

"Very few amateur athletes would go through an hour-and-a-half of physical exercise with their tank top off, " Hartmann said. "Usually they'd keep a t-shirt on or something, but Sean Og is so finely tuned and muscled . . . and I wouldn't say proud, but in tune with his body . . .

that it's different for him."

John Compton, owner of Compton Model Agency, concurred with Morgan about the growing opportunities for top hurlers and footballers. "Some of them would be well able to do endorsements, " he said, adding that GAA players shouldn't hesitate to enter the modelling industry. "You can endorse a product that could be very manly . . .

it is a manly industry, " he said.

Compton believes GAA players would even have a head-start in modelling because of their physiques and their sporting celebrity, "if they had a look that was model-able and a name to add to the product".

He said that adding GAA names to the books of modelling agencies was definitely a possibility in the near future. "There's plenty of scope there. They are becoming more celebrity-like and more marketable."

What's for sure is that more and more GAA players will enter product endorsement and modelling, as the trend of soccer players and rugby players doing so becomes more common. Already, Kerry's Colm 'The Gooch' Cooper advertises Lucozade Sport, while both Dublin footballer Ciaran Whelan and Kerry star Darragh O Se endorse Walkers crisps, a far cry from the Kerry team's deal with Bendix washing machines in the 1980s.

Many still have happy memories of an elegant black-and-white fashion-spread which ran in the nowdefunct Himself magazine in the '90s, when Wexford hurler Martin Storey and Offaly footballer Roy Malone were among the GAA stars brooding in designer suits. And Ireland and Munster stars, present and past, Donncha O'Callaghan and David Corkery, have regularly given Roy Keane a run for his money in the camera-friendly stakes.

But in Hartmann's eyes, most players are a long way off matching O hAilpin's physique. "He has chiselled himself over a number of years, " he said. "He is a model of excellence."