RHODE STAR NIALL McNAMEE ON FIVE YEARS WITHOUT A BET
Offaly’s Niall McNamee hasn’t always enjoyed the rewards his talents deserve, he hopes that changes with Rhode today
IT was only later that night, hours after he inspired Rhode to their Leinster quarter-final win over Simonstown Gaels, that Niall McNamee realised the significance of the date. November 13. Exactly five years since he last placed a bet.
McNamee is so content with life these days that it took his girlfriend to alert him to the landmark. If the period when he gambled can seem a lifetime ago, it remains a shadow over his world. He knows it’s all too easy to slip back into his previous existence. Every day, he has to carefully sidestep anything which might trigger his addiction.
He doesn’t watch horse racing anymore, to the extent that he avoids pubs that are showing it. If an ad for a bookmakers or the racing results comes on the car radio, he turns it off immediately. At half-time during a live Premier League game on television, he changes the channel. ‘I don’t know if you have noticed but during a big soccer game, there can be four or five ads for bookmakers in every break,’ McNamee explains.
‘They are all feeding into your head, that this is good craic. It is all just a bit of fun.’
And McNamee wants to make clear that gambling is fun for some people. There are team-mates on his Rhode side that meet St Vincent’s in today’s Leinster club final who like a bet and the 31-year-old has no issue with that. ‘It’s their business,’ he explains.
‘There are friends of mine who gamble, who might have a bet once a week, once a month or whatever.
‘And that’s fine. But then there are a group of people who, once they have one bet, they can’t stop. I was part of that group.’
McNamee was the second highprofile GAA player, after Oisín McConville, to go public about his addiction.
With Galway hurler Davy Glennon’s recent revelations, along with the release of Cathal McCarron’s autobiography, there’s a school of thought that gambling is developing into a serious issue within the association. There’s even a theory that the monastic lifestyle top-level players are expected to lead may contribute to it. But McNamee insists that the GAA is only holding a mirror up to the wider Irish society and it’s a problem there, too.
‘In terms of the general public, the GAA is in every parish and it is just a reflection of what is going on in society. You don’t necessarily have to be a GAA player to have a problem. I’m known as a footballer and talked of my problems, so a lot of guys contacted me because of that but to be honest, I think it’s a massive problem across society.’
Online gambling has intensified the issue. The ease of it. Anonymity of it. Strange thing is that McNamee never found it appealing. For a few months in 2008, he worked in an office in Tullamore. He opened an online account, believing it could mask his growing problem.
‘I thought it would be easier for me to bet, not walk down to the bookies. But I closed my account after a while for the simple reason that when I went to the bookies, I was handing money over the counter. It was very real. I could quantify it whereas doing it on the computer, it was just keying in numbers and had no real value for me.’
But that’s not the case for the new generation. McNamee can see it in players after training, that they can instantly access an app on a phone and scroll through the odds. ‘It’s so easy to place a bet. We could be chatting here and placing a bet. If someone’s bored at home, watching a game, they can think I will just have one bet.’
It’s the number of online bookmakers that concerns McNamee and he feels there should be more checks in place. If a person has opened one online account, he must remain with that bookie. It’s a novel idea that is sure to face opposition from an industry that has a mighty lobby group, but the gifted Offaly forward insists something must be done.
‘It needs to be made harder for people to make a bet. If I went into a bank today, looking for a car loan, they will look at my affordability, how much I earn, my out-goings etc. And they will give me a loan I can afford. Whereas I can go online now, set up an account and none of these questions are asked. You can put as much money into the account and it’s never asked where it is coming from. They don’t care where it is coming from. ‘Similarly, if I went into a different bank tomorrow and asked for a car loan, they will say you just got a car loan from this bank, why do you need a second one. Where I can go to one bookies’ webpage and set up an account, go into a different one tomorrow and set up and there would be no questions asked. I could set up 10 different accounts and no question would be asked.
‘If you had something that said you can gamble, but you can only set up one account with one bookmaker and you are allocated a certain amount of money from your income every month that you are able to gamble. That’s one way to check and stop people.’
McNamee works part-time with the
Even if I won €20,000, there wouldn’t be a hope of me stopping
GPA, meeting players to discuss their gambling issues. ‘I have heard horror stories of hundreds of thousands being lost and no question is ever asked as to where the money is coming from. And that is where the real problem lies.
‘Gambling is fun. It is easy to see why people get addicted to it. When I used to put money on a horse, it could be a whole weeks’ wages and it is coming around the last bend, two furlongs out, the same energy and nervousness and anxiety I get before a big game in Croke Park is being replicated in this one moment, and I am thinking if this horse wins, I have all this money. And if it loses, I don’t eat for a week.
‘It is fun, it really heightens the senses and it is an adrenaline rush. And that is why people get sucked into it.
‘Once you are in it, you enter a dreamworld. If this bet comes in or that bet, if I had a nice car or I paid off my parents’ mortgage, I would be happy then. If I could just do that.
‘But I would never be happy and I would never do those things. If you gave me 10 grand and I went to the bookies and won 20, there wouldn’t be a hope of me stopping. I would go back to the bookies tomorrow with that 20 grand because I would want to win 40. That’s the way this addiction works.’
Even before the advent of online bookies and phone apps, GAA dressing rooms would be a hive of betting talk. For some time after McNamee came clean about his problems, his team-mates were careful not to mention racing or football tips. ‘Roy Malone, who was part of our team for years, would make a joke out of it. If lads were talking about gambling, Roy would say “sssh, he’s over there,” which lightened the mood.’
These days, he would simply walk out of the dressing-room and head on to the field and practise the football skills that initially made McNamee’s name. Today will be his sixth provincial decider (five for Rhode and one for Offaly back in 2006) and he’s still chasing that elusive Leinster medal.
Now in his early 30s, McNamee has been referred to as the finest footballer outside the game’s toptier counties for a decade, although when he first played with Offaly, they were close to the summit, playing Division 1 football. ‘Those were great days, travelling to Omagh for a match or welcoming Kerry to Tullamore.’
Ever since alerting the wider world to his talent as a teenage prodigy, McNamee has carried the Faithful footballing flame. He has missed only one Championship game in 14 years with Offaly – a qualifier against London that fell during his leaving cert. As an 18year-old, he played minor, Under21 and senior for the county in the same year. But his best years coincided with fallow years for Offaly and McNamee became better known for the demons he had to wrestle – and eventually defeat.
If he is able to pull the strings for a famous Rhode win this afternoon, though, it will be his rare footballing talent that will make the headlines again.