It's an early contender for oddest story of the GAA inter-county silly season. Double All-Ireland winning Kilkenny Hurler Matthew Ruth will be taken on a VIP trip by multi-million album selling Canadian band Arcade Fire, for not leaking their new album after he accidentally became one of the world's first owners of the new record.

Ruth was one of two people who bought the album from Rollercoaster Records on Kieran Street in Kilkenny, two days before the album’s scheduled worldwide release. The album had remained a closely guarded, and strictly unreleased, entity until the Kilkenny shop became the first in the world to put it on sale. Ruth tweeted a picture of the album after buying and soon word had spread online that the album was out and he was receiving requests to put a copy of the album online.

The band’s representatives were quickly on to Rollercoaster Records, who had sold two copies and were able to contact the lucky customers and ask them to return to the albums. A spokesperson from the record store told the Irish Independent the early release was “an honest mistake... luckily we know all our customers and were able to retrieve the sold albums."

Ruth returned the album and later that day got a phone call from the Arcade Fire lead singer, Win Butler. Butler thanked Ruth for not leaking the album online and offered to fly Ruth to an Arcade Fire gig as a VIP guest. "He told me how much the band appreciated us not leaking the CD online. He said they had gigs coming up and would fly us over to meet him," Ruth said.