@farmerinthecity said the club rang TH up and gave him her number ⌠Is he telling porkies?
Not the same point. There are question marks, and they are in the public domain. You and I may have more information, but the parents who have their 5 year old and are questioning what sport to bring them to, may not have that information. Clarity should be brought to the matter, people should be assured in the public domain that the processes are in place, for this not to happen, and to explain why they happened in the first place.
This took place under the watch of a GAA Club, to ignore it is to allow a vacuum of information, and in a vacuum people will come to their own conclusions.
Peddling third hand info is very dangerous - You could ruin a clubs reputation with such lazy practices.
Did warning signs not become apparent when an overweight middle aged lad with fuck all background in camogie requests to coach a bunch of young girls?
ok, I get your point. They should clarify what they did with regards to their vetting and checks. However, if they were to come out and basically say we did all we could, it would look like they were washing their hands of the situation.
But I suppose that just opens a wider point that there is only so much any garda vetting can do if the person involved has no records or displayed no signs of kiddie fiddling before.
Didnât he have a daughter of his own of that age playing camogie?
So?
Did the club give him her number also? 
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his daughter was playing and he coached. not unusual at all for a parent to get involved, and considering it was a high profile GGA journalist, it wouldnt look out of the ordinary at all.
Iâm curious, what did you want them to do when he came calling? He had a daughter playing, offered to get involved. What would your next step have been if you were the Club?
âSorry, youâve never played camogie, weâre not interestedâ
Agreed. Farmer has questioned the entire situation of volunteerism of sport in the world.
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I would assume most clubs at the time would bite anyoneâs arm off who wanted to help coach underage camogie teams. Wouldnât be the easiest thing to source people for I assume. Not that it makes it right either.
There was a woman from Sport Ireland on the radio and she appeared to contradict this! Saying coaches should only have âlimited phone contactâ with the children they coach and only with the parents permission. I thought it was a very weird and surely sheâs wrong?
Its my understanding thats not the case in GAA anyway. No idea of other sports. You would know more regarding teenagers given your coaching?
Of course they would. Now there is vetting in place, and I imagine its far more difficult in city clubs where you genuinely dont know your neighbour, so in these cases vetting is far more important. But as has been said here, vetting can only get you so far.
From my recollection, it is possible to contact kids directly, but only with written consent from the parent that you would do so. Some parents dont want to be plagued with texts about trainings or whatever and prefer if its just sent to the kid directly. First port of call is to parents though.
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Look - I am just saying that it struck me as a little odd that he would be seen as a reasonable individual to coach a girlâs camogie team.
I mean coach would equate to having some level of knowledge of the sport.
Iâm unaware of any paedo ring involving judges and gardai in Cobh.
you think it is odd that a parent volunteered? He wasnt the coach or manager as far as I know, just a selector/helper type nobody that gets involved.
Nowadays you cant get involved in coaching any team without the correct courses done, so nobody can simply walk up and get access as may have been the case in the past. You also need to be vetted. He didnât run the team, he helped out, selector, etc.
He was a respected national journalist, lauded by his peers and known outside of Ireland. He had a daughter involved in the team, genuinely, there would have been little or no alarm bells rang at the time youâd feel. It is a sobering wake up call to all sports and associations though.
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I believe all contact is with the parents unless specific consent is provided by the parents otherwise. In practise id say any mentor with an ounce of cop on doesnt contact kids directly
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