O’Gara Rumour

[Cap'n Grumpy]

i will wager Euro 10,000.00 that this is all nonsense.

All together now,

"Are you Ronan, are you Ro-onan,
Are you Ronan in disguise
Aaaare you Ro-onan in dis-guise?"

[bogboy]

WEE Jane

At the prices you charge he'd be deeper in debt

and he might like it

I heard a rumour he backed himself for the highest points total

TG I didn't

[browner]

From the Irish Indo.......................

Don't know who penned this (say's a lot maybe) but i do agree to a large extent.

The idea that the press only give the public what they want is bullshit.

Anyway....................

It's the early 1990s. Schoolboy rugby star Ronan O'Gara is practicing his place-kicking when a mysterious stranger appears to him in a puff of smoke and makes a Faustian offer.

"I see great things ahead for you young O'Gara," says the stranger. "You will play for Ireland and the Lions. You will win three Triple Crowns with Ireland and a European Cup, a competition which has not yet been invented, with Munster. You will become one of the most popular sportsmen in the country and make a number of cheesy but lucrative advertisements. And, while we're at it, your friend Peter Stringer can be scrum half for all those triumphs."

"Cool," says O'Gara, "But I know this story. Where's the catch? Don't I have to sign over my soul or something?" The Devil shakes his head. "That is soooo last century, dude. We do these things differently now. All you have to do is let your private life become public property. Where's the harm in that?" Where indeed? Maybe young O'Gara would have signed up under those conditions, confident that nothing he would ever do off the pitch would interest the general public.

Unfortunately, as is usual in morality tales of this ilk, the Devil would have had the last laugh. Wonderful and all as the Irish out half's career has been, at this moment he must be wondering if it's all been worth it. A man who has given huge pleasure to the sports fans of this country has been shamefully hounded to the point where he has been become an object of pity rather than admiration. And, to some extent, we are all guilty.

Let's dispense with the hypocrisy. We can not blame the French media for this one. Months ago I heard that tabloid newspapers based in this country were sniffing around O'Gara's private life. In fact I planned to write a column about this kind of intrusion back then. But I didn't, for fear of being accused of doing the very kind of thing the Irish media have been at over the past week, airing the allegations under the guise of concern.

Because, unless there are a lot of undeclared L'Equipe readers out there, the precise nature of O'Gara's alleged difficulties would have remained mysterious in this country had the Irish papers not repeated them. The relief was palpable. Your newspapers could give you the gossip by pretending they were merely repeating the outrageous calumnies perpetrated by the cheese-eating slander monkeys. It was the kind of subterfuge a five-year-old could see through.

I've met Ronan O'Gara a couple of times. I've also met his father, a man from Collooney and a Sligo Rovers fan who has bequeathed to his son a Sligo accent unshakeable by Cork birth and education. For these parochial reasons I've always taken a special interest in O'Gara Junior (Look, Sligo is a small and largely unsuccessful county, we'll take our heroes where we can get them).

His emergence onto the Irish team coincided almost exactly with our journey out of the doldrums in which we had languished from the mid-1980s to the mid-'90s. He seemed, in many ways, emblematic of the way in which Munster became the country's first mass appeal rugby team. His very appearance suggested the kind of innocence which lay at the heart of the province's foreign adventures.

That innocence is no more. Ronan O'Gara has become yet another victim of the contemporary notion that everyone's business is everyone else's business. A society which seems to think that soap operas are in some way real has now developed the notion that real people can be treated as though they were soap opera characters.

I'm not even going to speculate about whether the O'Gara rumours are true or not. Because it's none of my feck business. And it's none of your's either. And neither are any of the other rumours which have been floating around about well-known Irish sportsmen. I don't care if A is gay, if B went berserk and smashed up his local pub, if C switched counties because he was having an affair, if D was banging his clubmate's wife, if E's loss of form is due to a drink problem. Honestly I don't.

I am interested in A, B, C, D and E because of what they do on the pitch. Their lives don't interest me because I have one of my own. Which is more than you can say for the anonymous hit-and-run internet merchants who post rumours and allegations on their miserable blogs and websites as though the players involved were figures in just one more reality television show.

At some stage we seem to have lost sight of the fact that sportsmen are human beings. Look at the way professional soccer players are treated. Every two-bit columnist and pub bore feels free to berate David and Victoria Beckham for their "showbiz marriage" and suggest that the couple have stayed together for the sake of their public image. I'm always intrigued as to where these great investigators get their information. Perhaps they're just employing their profound knowledge of human psychology, the kind gleaned from slumping on the couch watching Big Brother for several hours on the end.

It is a media commonplace too that many soccer WAGs are just in it for the money and prestige. Again, how do the journalists who write this prurient rubbish come by their knowledge? Who knows the real story of anyone else's marriage? Who knows what the footballer and the WAG are like when they get home, close the door and sigh with relief at the absence of the cameras? Ronan O'Gara's plight has attracted a lot of sympathy because he is one of our own. But Wayne Rooney and Coleen McLoughlin, a woman who can't buy a handbag without attracting some derogatory comment, are no less entitled to their privacy.

Back in the 18th century the keepers of mental asylums used to charge a few bob to members of the public who wanted to gawp at the unfortunate lunatics. We're beyond that these days. The tabloids, and increasingly the broadsheets, charge us a few bob and let us gawp at the celebrities. This is the modern-day freak show and unfortunately sportsmen, and sportswomen -- though not nearly as often -- have been caught up in it.

Some people would have you believe that this obsession with the intimate minutiae of other people's lives is merely the expression of a natural and healthy human hunger for gossip. But, in a week when some posh bimbo appeared on ITV to offer the opinion that there's no difference between call girls and footballers' wives, it might be time to consider the more sinister implications of the way we treat our public figures.

I have a confession to make. When I was 20 I emigrated to England and worked with a news agency which supplied stories to the British tabloid press. I worked there for a week. Why such a short time? Well, the first six days were your normal round of car crashes, political resignations and court cases. But on the seventh day I was dispatched to Islington with a photographer, our mission to wait outside the home of a popular soap star of the time (OK then, Nick Berry, Wicksy from Eastenders and later Constable something or other in Heartbeat) in an effort to catch him bringing a woman home. We hung around in the shadows for half an hour at which point something snapped and I told the photographer I was going for a pint. Thus ended a promising career in the gutter press.

The reason I'm telling you this story is that even a week in that environment led me to draw a surprising conclusion. The various hacks and snappers chasing down the London celebs weren't just doing it because it was a job. In many cases they harboured a genuine animus against the pop stars, soap actors and footballers who were their quarry. It makes sense really. You couldn't do a job like that unless you were personally driven. And the driving force is jealousy, the kind of jealousy which fuels hatred.

There is nothing harmless about treating people the way Ronan O'Gara and his wife have been treated in the past week. There is a real hatred there and a desire to see the man cut down to size.

But it's not just the papers, if you've bought one of those papers or gossiped about the rumours in the pub then you're

part of the problem too. Because the media doesn't cover things for pure pig iron's sake. The excuse of every sleazy tabloid is that they're giving the public what they want. And maybe that's true.

It's sad. I can't help thinking that today there are talented 16-year-olds kicking around on the nation's pitches, teenagers who will one day become national heroes by making the most of their God-given gifts, who don't realise the danger they will be putting themselves in. Just by scoring that vital goal, try or point, they may be giving away any right to a private life. That is an unacceptable position to put anyone in.

I wish Ronan O'Gara and his family well. And it would be nice to think that this kind of thing won't happen again. Nice but foolish. I'm writing this column from Longford where the local paper, the Longford Leader, has an editorial bemoaning the behaviour of newspapers -- Irish newspapers, not French ones -- which have hounded the family of a woman recently murdered in the town. Even at the funeral the family could not be left in peace.

What have we become?

[aarons]

yawn. everyone - and i mean everyone - in bordeaux was talking about these rumours before they hit the irish or french papers. the press did not lead the way on this.

[browner]

the press did not lead the way on this.

Maybe not ...............i don't know, it still doesn't absolve the press from any responsibility.

everyone - and i mean everyone - in bordeaux was talking about these rumours before they hit the irish or french papers.

Bordeaux must be a small place.


All i'm saying is that i agree with the general thrust of the article, pity he couldn't put his name on it.

[doodle]

"What have we become?"

Well, you've become a journalist, mate!

'Nuff said.

[moondance]

I've met Ronan O'Gara a couple of times. I've also met his father, a man from Collooney and a Sligo Rovers fan who has bequeathed to his son a Sligo accent unshakeable by Cork birth and education. For these parochial reasons I've always taken a special interest in O'Gara Junior (Look, Sligo is a small and largely unsuccessful county, we'll take our heroes where we can get them).

If I'm reading this right, he's saying Ronan was born and educated in Cork? He may have been educated in Cork but he was born in San Diego, didn't think that was in Cork.

[Freddie Benson]

RO'G is well known for being a prat and having his head stuck up his own ar$e.

But that's not a hanging offence not by a long chalk.

His form on the pitch however..............

[aarons]

Maybe not ...............i don't know, it still doesn't absolve the press from any responsibility.

the press is there to represent the things that are of interest to the people who read it. the idea that it is a separate entity that should have a higher moral purpose is false, and unsustainable in the modern era when the means of communication are open to everyone.

the press represents human nature.

everyone - and i mean everyone - in bordeaux was talking about these rumours before they hit the irish or french papers.

Bordeaux must be a small place.

obviously i meant irish fans

All i'm saying is that i agree with the general thrust of the article, pity he couldn't put his name on it.

i suspect that's an irish independent website issue, they often cut off names that are in the paper

[pwrmoore]

the press is there to represent the things that are of interest to the people who read it. the idea that it is a separate entity that should have a higher moral purpose is false, and unsustainable in the modern era when the means of communication are open to everyone.

the press represents human nature.

Then it is up to us to show that we're not interested in the petty gossiping by refusing to invest in any papers that indulge in it....

....... which I and many others have done.

Of course the idea that that the press bear no responsibility and only tell us what we're interested in hearing is also a fallacy. The press deliberately pick out and present the salacious gossip and represent it as if they are merely the innocent messengers while knowing that they are exploiting the lowest instinct in us all in order to sell more copy. No-one is an innocent party in this two-way street..... though some have more power to change it than others....

[HwoodMike2umate]

Fact not rumour --

Did u no that Collooney used to have 3 railway stations? Could that explain everything?

[HwoodMike2umate]

Rumour not Fact (or, more likely, possibly just wishful thinking on my part) -------------

I'd wager between Euro 1000 and Euro 1500 that the San Diego Charger Girls are somehow possibly involved (albeit to to a small degree) in all this nonsense.

[cjp]

Heard today speculation of course that it was an Ulster player that said the joke in the changing room and BOD or POC swung for him over it.

[wee jane]

Well, where was Ronan last nite?

Does anyone know?

[wee jane]

and No , i wasnt spanking him.

But his wife should.