A Tyrone book

[seafoid]

I read it cover to cover...well written. Emotive subjects covered...addiction, violence, theft, thuggery, gay porn. O'Connor played a blinder...however not sure what Cathal was thinking producing the book at this stage...odd.

5 Sams

Did you ever read Nora Mharcais Bhig?

https://prezi.com/wnc39adwnbb3/nora-mharcais-bhig/
An coimhlint i gcroi an duine...idir an maitheas agus an t-olcas...
saol na cathrach vs saol na tuaithe....
http://www.slideshare.net/Gaeilge2015/nora-mharcais-bhig

[seafoid]

http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/cathal-mccarron-s-interview-a-gamble-the-tyrone-player-lost-1.2892680

There's every chance that if McCarron continues along the same path he's on, he'll end up in credit over time. But that feels a distance away just yet.
After reading his book, you're left with a sense if Cathal McCarron had gone his whole life without betting so much as a penny, he would still be an unusually violent, belligerent loose cannon with a sharpened sense of victimhood.
You want to have sympathy for McCarron the addict because the torment that pushed him to the brink of throwing himself in front of a tube train in London is obviously real.
But to do that, you have to make yourself be okay with McCarron the person and that is harder to do.
His book tour gambled on nobody drilling too far down into this contradiction.
Another bet lost

[Jinxy]

Cathal lasted five minutes after coming on in the second half of the county league final. Martial art punch i think.

Describe this to me.

[Frank_The_Tank]

http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/cathal-mccarron-s-interview-a-gamble-the-tyrone-player-lost-1.2892680

There's every chance that if McCarron continues along the same path he's on, he'll end up in credit over time. But that feels a distance away just yet.
After reading his book, you're left with a sense if Cathal McCarron had gone his whole life without betting so much as a penny, he would still be an unusually violent, belligerent loose cannon with a sharpened sense of victimhood.
You want to have sympathy for McCarron the addict because the torment that pushed him to the brink of throwing himself in front of a tube train in London is obviously real.
But to do that, you have to make yourself be okay with McCarron the person and that is harder to do.
His book tour gambled on nobody drilling too far down into this contradiction.
Another bet lost

Any chance you can post the article?

[Walter Cronc]

http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/cathal-mccarron-s-interview-a-gamble-the-tyrone-player-lost-1.2892680

There's every chance that if McCarron continues along the same path he's on, he'll end up in credit over time. But that feels a distance away just yet.
After reading his book, you're left with a sense if Cathal McCarron had gone his whole life without betting so much as a penny, he would still be an unusually violent, belligerent loose cannon with a sharpened sense of victimhood.
You want to have sympathy for McCarron the addict because the torment that pushed him to the brink of throwing himself in front of a tube train in London is obviously real.
But to do that, you have to make yourself be okay with McCarron the person and that is harder to do.
His book tour gambled on nobody drilling too far down into this contradiction.
Another bet lost

Any chance you can post the article?

The thought struck during one of the interminably awkward pauses between Cathal McCarron and Ger Gilroy the other night that we were listening to the radio equivalent of a bet gone wrong.

The Tyrone defender has been doing the circuit to promote his book, Out Of Control, over the past month and always in the background has loomed the family of the 15-year-old girl with whom he had a Tinder encounter in 2015 and their opposition to him being afforded any publicity at all.
For the most part, the background is where the story has stayed. Understandably enough, most media outlets have been leery about getting tangled up in the weeds of it.

Even though it's been through the legal process and the DPP has decided McCarron had no case to answer, it was just too much of a minefield to chance walking into, especially given the distress of the family.

McCarron likely assumed his Off The Ball interview on Newstalk would go the same way. But right there, in the gaping silences of the closing five minutes of his interview with Gilroy, you could hear the gears turning as the grim truth dawned. His answers became shorter, more scattershot, less coherent, more defiant.
Even if Gilroy's intention was to give voice to an unknown and largely silenced family, the upshot was a glimpse into the mind of a gambler in trouble. McCarron must have felt that familiar, gradual untethering during the interview, the sense of a situation that was getting away from him, that could go anywhere. He said a while ago that he hasn't had a bet since April Fool's Day 2014. But gambling is almost never about the money to someone who has a problem.

Addiction
One of the aspects of addiction that makes it so toxic is the fact it's so unknowable. An addict cedes control without knowing really why. Control over yourself, control over consequences. There is no A + B = C. There is just A and when nothing matters beyond A, you can't know where it will all lead. And if you don't know, then nobody around you can possibly know. And so it goes, a wretched oil spill of badness whose outer boundaries are a poisonous mystery to all involved.

The lucky ones come out the other side with some vestige of a life left to tend to. Oddly enough, the unknowable side to addiction becomes a help at this stage. Because nobody really knows what you went through to get yourself clean/dry/bet-free, there's a decent chance of forgiveness for any and all past sins as long as you show willing.

The addict benefits from getting another chance, the people around the addict benefit from a life drained of the old drama.
McCarron robbed from family, friends, the local community in Tyrone and myriad others but because overcoming addiction is such a brutal road to walk, society in general is largely okay with looking past all that and moving on with a clean – or cleanish – slate. He became an addiction counsellor and is training to become a psychotherapist. That's action to back up talk and people respond well to it.
Apart from anything else, it could well turn out to be incredibly important action.

Chances are, society is going to need addiction counselling with gambling specialisation to become a growth industry over the coming decade.
Just last week, the Gambling Commission in the UK released a report claiming that 16 per cent of 11-15-year-olds in England and Wales are spending their own money on gambling on a weekly basis.

Addiction services
Unsurprisingly, it was found to be twice as prevalent in boys of that age (21%) than girls (11%). When one in every five schoolboys who are still more than three years away from legal gambling age are already having a bet of some kind at least once a week, the prospect of what's coming down the tracks is scary.
In Ireland, a report last summer claimed that addiction services have come across problem gamblers as young as nine years old, so we are in no position to presume it's just a UK problem.

In this world, we are going to desperately need more ex-gamblers to become counsellors and psychotherapists and teachers and Gardaí and sports coaches and all the rest.

All available evidence says the gambling problem will get worse before it gets better.
There's every chance that if McCarron continues along the same path he's on, he'll end up in credit over time. But that feels a distance away just yet.
After reading his book, you're left with a sense if Cathal McCarron had gone his whole life without betting so much as a penny, he would still be an unusually violent, belligerent loose cannon with a sharpened sense of victimhood.
You want to have sympathy for McCarron the addict because the torment that pushed him to the brink of throwing himself in front of a tube train in London is obviously real.

But to do that, you have to make yourself be okay with McCarron the person and that is harder to do.
His book tour gambled on nobody drilling too far down into this contradiction.

Another bet lost.

[johnneycool]

Gilroy was using info in the public domain

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/exclusive-late-late-with-controversial-tyrone-star-must-not-go-ahead-father-of-girl-15-who-met-gaa-player-after-tinder-match-35150212.html

After a few weeks of conversing with women online he decided to meet up with one of them.
"I was texting this girl from Kildare, We arranged to meet that night in Kildare town. I was on my way to a GA [Gamblers Anonymous] meeting in Athy. I know the contradiction is ridiculous.
"The girl said she drove an old-style Jaguar. She sent me a picture of the car. I think it was red."
He explained that she had spoken about college and he told her about his job during "harmless online chat".
"When we met she looked at least nineteen or twenty."
McCarron claims that the first time he realised the girl was in fact 15 was two weeks later when her father called him at work.
He said that when he learned this "a weakness came over" him.
"I was in shock. I also felt I hadn't the right to say anything to the man. Part of me could understand his anger."
He admits that a week later he was interviewed by two gardaí in Kildare station about the incident. This was the same night as the GAA All Stars function in the Convention Centre in Dublin.
He said: "I made a mistake, but this was the most innocent misjudgement I ever made."
In July of this year the DPP decided not to prosecute McCarron over the case and in a letter sent to the girl's parents a senior prosecutor outlines that the defence of "honest mistake" was accepted by the office.
"In this case there was evidence to support this defence. The suspect and your daughter initially made contact on a website that required legal age to be on the website of 18 years of age. Her Facebook page had a date of birth which showed her to be 19 years of age. The suspect said he believed her to be 19 years of age.
"The lawyer concluded that it would not be possible for the prosecution to overcome this defence and that therefore there was no reasonable prospect of a conviction."
The victim's father explained that he was not aware that his daughter was meeting with McCarron on October 22, 2015.
"My daughter wouldn't have many friends. She never goes out, she never goes to a teenage disco. None of that ever goes on.
"We were curtailing the amount of time she spent online. But we weren't monitoring it very closely."
He continued: "That Monday night she asked to go to meet her friend for coffee from school. She showed me the text where they arranged to meet. I dropped her up the road to Kildare Village. She was dropped at 6pm and she was to be picked up at 7pm.
"Her mother went in at 7 and there was no sign of her. The place was closed, panic started and I got a bad feeling. I said 'there is something wrong here'.
"Eventually she turned up outside Tesco at twenty past seven. So we gave her a telling off and the whole lot."
He continued: "We didn't know anything until she went to school the next day, that was Tuesday. We got word back then. A neighbour rang my wife and said that our daughter was going around the school and telling everyone that she was with a guy"

The allegation McCarron had sex with the girl was not in the public domain?

The inference that he got off on a technicality rather than he was duped into believing he was not committing a crime is quite a dangerous line of questioning to go down.

What age, morally, does a person become accountable for their actions? Surely the girl's family have to acknowledge her role in this? Is her age really a complete exoneration for her role?

I don't think many paedos would get away with that defence. She was 15 and a child
Tom Humphries destroyed his life and career over a 14 year old who may have been egging him on. who knows `?But in the eyes of the law she was a child.

Seafoid,
  Stating the obvious here, but Humphries knowingly got involved with a 14 year old girl and he knew her age all along. In McCarrons defence the girl he got involved with was on websites where you had to be 18, told him she had a car and so forth, so he must have been convinced she was over the age of consent. The Guards seem to have taken this stance as well and that is very different to Humphries actions which were reprehensible.

[Franko]

Seafoid.  There's absolutely no comparison between Humphries' actions and McCarron's.  None.  It's more than a little weird that you'd suggest there was.

FWIW, I think McCarron is just a bad guy all round.  He's suffered from addiction but seems to think that excuses each and every trampish action that he's involved himself in.  It doesn't.  He hasn't had a bet since April 2014 but he's been beating guys up and cheating on his missus.  I believe him when he says he thought the girl was over 18 though.

He may get away from the gambling but he'll never get away from the fact that he's a sc**bag.

[Main Street]

Seafoid.  There's absolutely no comparison between Humphries' actions and McCarron's.  None.  It's more than a little weird that you'd suggest there was.

FWIW, I think McCarron is just a bad guy all round.  He's suffered from addiction but seems to think that excuses each and every trampish action that he's involved himself in.  It doesn't.  He hasn't had a bet since April 2014 but he's been beating guys up and cheating on his missus.  I believe him when he says he thought the girl was over 18 though.

He may get away from the gambling but he'll never get away from the fact that he's a sc**bag.

You believe when he met the girl, that he still believed she was over 18?

[Croí na hÉireann]

Gilroy was using info in the public domain

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/exclusive-late-late-with-controversial-tyrone-star-must-not-go-ahead-father-of-girl-15-who-met-gaa-player-after-tinder-match-35150212.html

After a few weeks of conversing with women online he decided to meet up with one of them.
"I was texting this girl from Kildare, We arranged to meet that night in Kildare town. I was on my way to a GA [Gamblers Anonymous] meeting in Athy. I know the contradiction is ridiculous.
"The girl said she drove an old-style Jaguar. She sent me a picture of the car. I think it was red."
He explained that she had spoken about college and he told her about his job during "harmless online chat".
"When we met she looked at least nineteen or twenty."
McCarron claims that the first time he realised the girl was in fact 15 was two weeks later when her father called him at work.
He said that when he learned this "a weakness came over" him.
"I was in shock. I also felt I hadn't the right to say anything to the man. Part of me could understand his anger."
He admits that a week later he was interviewed by two gardaí in Kildare station about the incident. This was the same night as the GAA All Stars function in the Convention Centre in Dublin.
He said: "I made a mistake, but this was the most innocent misjudgement I ever made."
In July of this year the DPP decided not to prosecute McCarron over the case and in a letter sent to the girl's parents a senior prosecutor outlines that the defence of "honest mistake" was accepted by the office.
"In this case there was evidence to support this defence. The suspect and your daughter initially made contact on a website that required legal age to be on the website of 18 years of age. Her Facebook page had a date of birth which showed her to be 19 years of age. The suspect said he believed her to be 19 years of age.
"The lawyer concluded that it would not be possible for the prosecution to overcome this defence and that therefore there was no reasonable prospect of a conviction."
The victim's father explained that he was not aware that his daughter was meeting with McCarron on October 22, 2015.
"My daughter wouldn't have many friends. She never goes out, she never goes to a teenage disco. None of that ever goes on.
"We were curtailing the amount of time she spent online. But we weren't monitoring it very closely."
He continued: "That Monday night she asked to go to meet her friend for coffee from school. She showed me the text where they arranged to meet. I dropped her up the road to Kildare Village. She was dropped at 6pm and she was to be picked up at 7pm.
"Her mother went in at 7 and there was no sign of her. The place was closed, panic started and I got a bad feeling. I said 'there is something wrong here'.
"Eventually she turned up outside Tesco at twenty past seven. So we gave her a telling off and the whole lot."
He continued: "We didn't know anything until she went to school the next day, that was Tuesday. We got word back then. A neighbour rang my wife and said that our daughter was going around the school and telling everyone that she was with a guy"

The allegation McCarron had sex with the girl was not in the public domain?

The inference that he got off on a technicality rather than he was duped into believing he was not committing a crime is quite a dangerous line of questioning to go down.

What age, morally, does a person become accountable for their actions? Surely the girl's family have to acknowledge her role in this? Is her age really a complete exoneration for her role?

I don't think many paedos would get away with that defence. She was 15 and a child
Tom Humphries destroyed his life and career over a 14 year old who may have been egging him on. who knows `?But in the eyes of the law she was a child.

Seafoid,
  Stating the obvious here, but Humphries knowingly got involved with a 14 year old girl and he knew her age all along. In McCarrons defence the girl he got involved with was on websites where you had to be 18, told him she had a car and so forth, so he must have been convinced she was over the age of consent. The Guards seem to have taken this stance as well and that is very different to Humphries actions which were reprehensible.

It's even worse than that, he was her mentor in a position of responsibility.

[Shamrock Shore]

Lads

I would recommend parking the other discussion as the journalist in question was never found guilty.

In fact I don't think he was even arraigned due to medical issues.

[Franko]

Seafoid.  There's absolutely no comparison between Humphries' actions and McCarron's.  None.  It's more than a little weird that you'd suggest there was.

FWIW, I think McCarron is just a bad guy all round.  He's suffered from addiction but seems to think that excuses each and every trampish action that he's involved himself in.  It doesn't.  He hasn't had a bet since April 2014 but he's been beating guys up and cheating on his missus.  I believe him when he says he thought the girl was over 18 though.

He may get away from the gambling but he'll never get away from the fact that he's a sc**bag.

You believe when he met the girl, that he still believed she was over 18?

Yeah, I do.  Young girls nowadays can make themselves look so much older than they are. Now if he'd said he thought she was 27 (for example) I'd have called bullshit, but 15 to 19, I believe.

[seafoid]

I believe he thought he was 18 as well.

It's just that underage sex is a legal issue because an underage  person is not deemed responsible enough to decide that they want to raise a child, basically.

Any teacher that has a fling with a pupil is in serious trouble.

The newstalk interview starts off with an ad for gambling. Jesus.

[5 Sams]

I read it cover to cover...well written. Emotive subjects covered...addiction, violence, theft, thuggery, gay porn. O'Connor played a blinder...however not sure what Cathal was thinking producing the book at this stage...odd.

5 Sams

Did you ever read Nora Mharcais Bhig?

https://prezi.com/wnc39adwnbb3/nora-mharcais-bhig/
An coimhlint i gcroi an duine...idir an maitheas agus an t-olcas...
saol na cathrach vs saol na tuaithe....
http://www.slideshare.net/Gaeilge2015/nora-mharcais-bhig

Fadó....

[longballin]

I believe he thought he was 18 as well.

It's just that underage sex is a legal issue because an underage  person is not deemed responsible enough to decide that they want to raise a child, basically.

Any teacher that has a fling with a pupil is in serious trouble.

The newstalk interview starts off with an ad for gambling. Jesus.

There is nothing wrong with gambling no more than alcohol - the issue is compulsive gambling.

[Main Street]

Seafoid.  There's absolutely no comparison between Humphries' actions and McCarron's.  None.  It's more than a little weird that you'd suggest there was.

FWIW, I think McCarron is just a bad guy all round.  He's suffered from addiction but seems to think that excuses each and every trampish action that he's involved himself in.  It doesn't.  He hasn't had a bet since April 2014 but he's been beating guys up and cheating on his missus.  I believe him when he says he thought the girl was over 18 though.

He may get away from the gambling but he'll never get away from the fact that he's a sc**bag.

You believe when he met the girl, that he still believed she was over 18?

Yeah, I do.  Young girls nowadays can make themselves look so much older than they are. Now if he'd said he thought she was 27 (for example) I'd have called bullshit, but 15 to 19, I believe.

You mean she would come to that date all dressed up to the 9's  with loads of make-up and be able to hide her  age?
possibly yes on looks but I doubt the charade could be kept up during conversation, however I suppose it's possible that all rational judgement could be suspended if the man just wanted sex, but when it comes to believing McCarron's word on the matter, that would be a leap too far.
And we have the evidence that the father dropped her off so she would in all probability be dressed casually without the overkill make-up.

And even more believability is lost by his need to have his account of the  'incident'  included in his book  as  in how the experience affected him, this is what my addiction made me do and not a sensible awareness in his head of how the encounter affected the girl emotionally and in the context of her family's reaction. The glaringly sensible thing would be to have excluded it totally, that's why it's inclusion smacks
of protesting too much.