BMWs, the Berkeley Court, the K Club, Mount Juliet, the golf set, Dragon’s Den, meeting Tiger Woods, meeting Freddie Flintoff, barbs at Jamie Redknapp, being Eamon Dunphy’s VBF, a swindling sister, you can sort of see a pattern here. All this bizarrely reminds me of that Marcus Sweeney chap and his mate the Wolf. The mystery GAA star and his sister were the Wholesome Wolves.
I grew up on the rumours of Paddy Cullen being Mr. X, untrue rumours which were entirely made up by some wag in a Dublin pub and spread across the city like Japanese knotweed.
I haven’t been in many pubs over the last three years. I don’t think I’d have believed any hypothetical rumours of this stuff had I been in a pub to hear them. This bates Banagher, as they say. It’s reminiscent of the Bishop Casey scandal in its own way. Ireland has been scandalised.
When all this broke last week, I thought of that story about the stolen BMW, and I thought “Boyzone plane crash in Australia”.
Here’s the thing. The mystery GAA star and his sister appear to have had a genuine falling out over money. Was it a genuine falling out at all? Were they in cahoots all along or did they independently arrive at the position where both were independent fraudsters?
Paul Flynn will never top the recruitment sham. Getting the GPA to use his recruitment company to find him the best candidate for the GPA role advertised. Skullduggery at its finest.
He told everyone he met he didn’t want to make a big deal of it, he wanted it kept quiet. I doubt a race night would work then. And Christ man, not everything has to be about betting and horses.
The man in question is and will be villified here and rightfully so but hard not to have some sympathy for someone who clearly caught in a debt spiral and fell into full panic mode. It’s sad it ever came to this as someone with his brilliance on the pitch deserves to be duly compensated for that alone. For all his greatness as a hurler he’s still only a human and he has erred, signicantly so.
The knives are out for the former GAA star now, it won’t be long before the Joe Duffy brigade are demanding his head on a spike. Every day there are more and more crawling out of the woodwork now to join in the kicking but bad as the nature of his alleged crime truly is, how many a GAA player has had violent episodes of their doing magically getting brushed under the carpet down the years? Or worse
After some many years of service to club, county and the game itself that it has now has come to this is profoundly sad. It strikes me that the institutions that benefited most from his glory days on the field maybe should have done more when he really needed help. Maybe they still can. I’d hate to think of some lad today who’s given everything to his County and to the GAA not being able to turn to them if finding themselves in dire straits after hanging up their boots.
This mystery GAA star has seemingly done very bad things. But there is still a reflex instinct on the part of many of his erstwhile and not so erstwhile fans to protect him in some way. Many of those who will not rush to protect him will choose to remain silent, hoping to wake up tomorrow and realise all this was a bad dream. Many of those who are criticising him are doing so with the heaviest of hearts. Because people cannot forget how he made them feel.
People are mourning their youth and mourning their innocence here. It isn’t a nice feeling when a personal hero falls so spectacularly, when a personal hero turns out to have been a massive cunt. The bargaining begins. Maybe the acts were cuntish, but maybe he’s not really a cunt, maybe he’s a victim of circumstance.
But the truth is, if this mystery GAA star was not a mystery GAA star dear to the hearts of the plain people of Ireland, the plain people of Ireland who are now reluctant to call for a head on a spike, would be furiously demanding a head on a spike.
People are scared of the truth here. They are scared that the hero will take all this badly and do something even worse, like take his own life.
The truth will out. It has to out. It has to be faced up to.
Different if in dire straits due to a string of failed investments or a lavish lifestyle surely… If a fella needed a dig out coz he was sick or lost the job or something agree 100%
Are Young Irelands in junior or intermediate hurling now? DJ and Charlie Carter really inspired a golden era in that club. Aside from the 2 senior titles they also won their sole minor A when DJ was in his final year at that grade too. I presume they got a bit of a boost when the two sons started playing for them.
Edit: I see they’re still a solid intermediate outfit.
Solid intermediate might be over stating it, they’ve been at the lower end of the grade for the last decade. They have some good young lads coming up along with the two Carey’s so should be getting closer in the coming years.
