There’s no bullshit to her. She seems utterly genuine. She’s obviously very successful and talented in her own right but struggles.
In the video above when she is asked what she’d say to someone suicidal, she burst into tears knowing their pain.
Tans are so fucking dumb
Just back from DiL. A beautiful refreshing morning. Soul cleansing.
Stay safe guys.
Zen.
Hon McNamee
Ronan McNamee’s arduous journey reaches its peak
After winning an Allstar in 2019, Ronan McNamee opened up in an Irish News interview about his struggles with depression and an attempt to take his own life in 2016. Hours after winning the All-Ireland that threatened to elude him, he spoke to Cahair O’Kane about completing the journey, why the medal will go to his parents’ house with the Allstar and what it meant to have his father at a game for the first time ever…
Ronan McNamee lifts aloft the Sam Maguire trophy after Tyrone’s victory over Mayo last Saturday. It was the completion of a long, arduous journey for the Aghyaran man. Picture by Seamus Loughran
15 September, 2021 01:00
HEADPHONES wrapped around the back of his neck, his face bearing the contentedness of a veteran rather than the disbelief of the youth surrounding him, Ronan McNamee takes pause in a world that is spinning crazily around him.
Two years after bringing a first Allstar back to the club, he joins Shane Sweeney and Marty Penrose on the short list of Celtic Cross winners to hail from Aghyaran.
Sixty five years after Paddy McLaughlin’s tractor and trailer transported the wood from the Baronscourt plantation to a field that would host the club’s first game on the day of the 1956 All-Ireland hurling final, this was for them as much as for him.
The week after McNamee was given his Allstar, we met in Strabane over a coffee. In that hour, his life spilled out into the dictaphone sitting on the round mahogany table in front of him.
McNamee recounted how, in early 2016, he had sunk so low into the depths of depression that he had attempted to take his own life.
Football kept reaching out to save him.
In late 2015, he was very close to boarding a plane to New York and disappearing away from it all.
One particular Saturday morning he was due to attend training. Danny McBride was coming to lift him. Instead, McNamee got in his car and drove the opposite direction from Garvaghey, ending up at his cousin’s house in Donegal, where he hid out for the day.
Mickey Harte worked with him and brought him around, and put him in touch with a Pieta House counsellor. That Harte was so determined to help rather than pushing him away is something that Tyrone’s full-back will remain eternally thankful for in a context that goes far beyond sport.
With Saturday’s post-match celebrations in full flow up towards the Hill, McNamee breaks off on his own. He walks down the Hogan Stand side and falls into a long embrace with his mother, Anne, at the barriers in the Hogan Stand.
His mother is a Tyrone Ultra, part of a group of supporters who travel to games home and away, from year’s start to end.
Behind her, his father, Johnny.
He had never been to a game before Saturday, club or county. It’s not that he doesn’t care, it’s just that he never really understood football.
When Ronan would be playing on TV, he’d watch the start and then get so anxious he’d go off up the road with a handful of stones, skipping them off the ground.
“Today, my oul boy, it’s the first time he’s ever come to a game of mine in his whole life, club or county. He was there today.
“I was chatting to him after and…ah, it’s unbelievable. He’s super proud anyway and he’d watch it at home.
“My brother Conor sort of pushed him into it, guilt-tripping him a wee bit maybe. It means an awful lot. It’s nice to have it. Things like this will be cherished.
“It means an awful lot to him regardless of how he shows it, I know it does. It just feels super sweet.”
And his mother?
“Up to high doe all week!”
When McNamee won that Allstar, he left it at his parents’ house as a small token of his thanks.
The All-Ireland medal will join it.
“The medal will go there too. It was her, and the oul boy to an extent but more her, that was driving me about when I needed drove about. I’m reaping the rewards of it now.
“It’s nice to be able to pay it back in some sort of form. It is super sweet. It’ll live long in the memory for sure.”
Along with Mattie Donnelly, Peter Harte and Niall Morgan, McNamee has soldiered for more than a decade. It’s often said they deserved All-Ireland medals but as a straight-talker, he would appreciate that until Saturday, they hadn’t really.
Sport gives you nothing you don’t earn.
“Sticking at it has paid off. There were times when it didn’t feel like it was gonna happen.
“Every game now feels that wee bit more important. Not that others weren’t important, but the older you get, the less time you have. The nerves be worse.
“It’s a great feeling because you know at some stage you’re gonna have to stop. I don’t want to but it’s whether your body’s able.
“You’re always striving to get to the pinnacle you watched for years. The Canavans, the Doohers, the Cavanaghs, the Gormleys, seeing that and wishing.”
From behind the sealed solid doors that bear the Tyrone crest, the party emerges almost ready for home.
Players turf their kitbags into either of the two buses. At the back of one, Conor McKenna leads the party. At the front of the other, Feargal Logan’s face bears that same smiling contentment as McNamee’s.
This was an All-Ireland nobody expected Tyrone to win.
Describing the last two months as “pretty nuts”, McNamee revealed that the squad didn’t know who’d be available for the Ulster final against Monaghan until “two or three hours before the game.”
They were given no hope against Kerry and were second favourites to Mayo, but outplayed both of them to become the first Ulster side in nine years to win Sam Maguire.
“It’s nice to prove people wrong. Inside your own house, you know what’s going on. Outside it, it’s nobody else’s business. If you feel that you’re good enough then why listen to noise?
“Every team’s the same. Keep it tight-lipped and you know yourself if you’re good enough.
“We’ve been there or thereabouts this long time but just stumbling at the last hurdle. I felt there was one in this team, with the ’08 minors and 2010 minors both winning All-Irelands, the likes of Mattie [Donnelly] and Petie [Harte] and wee Ronie [O’Neill] flying about.
“We were never far away but it’s just getting over the line. This year’s been pretty hectic but boys have been putting their shoulder to the wheel and buzzing for it.
“Naysayers spur you on and give you the feeling of ‘I’ll prove that f***er wrong’. We did. We did.
“We’re sort of laughing now, to be brutally honest, and it’s nice. Nobody’s gonna take this from this team, nobody. Whether they like it or not, it’s ours.
“The same as my Allstar that time, that medal will be in the house and there’ll be nobody taking it away.”
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Whatever happened this guy? Wasn’t he centre back at a young age and then just retired a year or two later ?
A good few lads like that. Meenan started an AI semi final at midfield against Armagh in 05 and I’m not sure he ever really featured in Championship after that.
Sweeney was a good player, hit a great late score against Armagh in that 05 game.
I recall sweeney retired for work reasons …
Wasn’t getting that much game time though. Tyrone had a good few backs coming through around that time. PJ Quinn, McCarron, Justy, Sean O’Neill were all kind of arriving on the scene that time and he would have been slipping further down the line.
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Good article. Seems a decent sort as does his family. Remember hearing about how much Harte did for him. I’d say he had a real sense of pastoral care for his players in fairness.
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Mickey is a complicated man but many lads he has had under him who have had their troubles or demons generally think the world of him for what he did for them. He’s helped out a lot of people near and far through troubled time.
I know the reference letter gets brought up a lot but it’s usually rolled out by people who don’t know the first thing about it or any context about it. It might have been ill advised but I think the portrayal on it is very unfair.
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McNamee is a good sort, you can tell by the way he plays the game even. The 2 positions the Tyrone sides of the 00s were most vulnerable in were keeper and fullback, they are possibly the 2 positions this team are strongest in.
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There a great bunch those Tyrone lads. Fair play to dooher and logan, it must have been like preparing a herd of limousins for their first holy communion
McNamee has really sorted the no 3 position out since Mickey put him there in 2015. Excellent player and highly underrated, should have had an All Star in 2015, got it deservedly in 2019 and deserves one this year but doesn’t really seem to be getting much plaudits.
Tyrone were unlucky with the full back position during Harte’s years, the death of Cormac robbed them of him, Justy McMahon looked like he was going to be a mainstay at 3 for years but had big injury problems and then Conor Clarke also burst onto the scene looking like the long term answer but an ACL injury in 2014 did for him. Clarke is actually younger than McNamee but I don’t even think he’s lining out with Omagh these days or is with the reserves.
The “reserves” 
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Yes. There’s a reserve championship in Tyrone, numbnuts.
Keep on making an idiot out of yourself.
This is the context people might be looking for.
"Judge Piers Grant explained in court that the legal guidelines for these type of offences were between one and four years.
He then outlined a number of mitigating factors that led him to the sentence he imposed. Among these were references supplied by Mickey Harte, the defendant’s “respectable and responsible” family, the intoxicated state of both parties and the defendant’s guilty plea and previously clear record.
Eileen Calder from the Rape Crisis Centre said the sentence sent out the wrong message. “When I heard this sentence, I couldn’t believe it. This woman is a highly-respected woman and she has suffered so much as a result of this,” she said.
"She thought she was safe going in a taxi with this man because she knew him and his family and she knew he was aware of her state of health. Instead he did that to her and threw her out without her clothes and left her for dead. The men who found her thought she was dead.
Sigh.
Brendan Kenneally no 1 onto score points over sexual assaults.
You don’t know much about Mickey Harte of the case involved. I’d say Mickey looks back at it now and would say it was ill advised but I don’t think you understand the reasons behind what he did and if you wish to get all outraged and piqued over it then maybe you should launch some challenge against the legal system and how it uses character references.
There’s a difference between politicians doing character references for votes and this.
I’m not on to score points at all. I just feel the horror of the exact crimes of the lad who he wrote the character reference for shouldn’t be glossed over.
I have said on here in the past that I don’t agree with the whole idea of character references.
We’ve had this discussion before.
It’s funny how you can turn a blind eye to it when it’s right next you but have to take the stage to grandstand when its people you don’t like.
Mickey Harte and Gerry Adams are two people you consistently go full postal outrage on these exact lines whenever anything comes on this forum in relation to them.
Funny how you can’t show consistent behaviour with regard to others in this line.
Do you think victims of sexual assault want guys like you using their pain and suffering for you exercise personal grudges or dislikes?
Why is it always this you refer back to anytime Mickey Harte is mentioned on this forum?
Do you do the same with Donal Og for instance?
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