Rush to delete X-rated GAA stripper images

REVELLERS who attended a sordid GAA victory party scrambled desperately to delete the X-rated pictures and videos of the event once they began to circulate widely online.

Sports fans were shocked when a series of sleazy images taken at a private party to celebrate St Patrick Ballyragget’s intermediate hurling championship victory in Kilkenny went viral online on Wednesday.

The pictures show two women stripping in front of large numbers of cheering men, while a small number of men also stripped and posed with the women while holding the championship trophy. One particularly shocking image shows one of the women performing a sex act on a man while several other men are seen laughing.

Another video lasting more than a minute shows the two women stripping in front of a man in his boxer shorts while other men stand around laughing and filming on their smartphones.

One of the women has since said that she is a stripper and was paid to attend the event.

It has now emerged that as the pictures began to circulate to the wider public, members of a whatsapp group who were at the celebration warned one another to remove any images of the event they’d posted online.

‘Get everything f***ing down,’ one member wrote to his friends.

Others agreed: ‘Lads get it down to f***.’

Another wrote: ‘Deny everything this is serious now boys.’

A plan was also hatched among the revellers as to how they would explain the presence of the intermediate hurling championship cup in several of the photos.

One wrote: ‘Everybody say you weren’t there. Don’t know anything about it. Club celebrations finished on Sunday night and that was a 21st birthday. Nothing to do with the club. The cup was just left there from Sunday.’

Another agreed: ‘Lads, Everyone needs to keep saying it was a 21st. The cup just happened to be there in the pub.’

Ballyragget’s chairman has said that the photographs were taken at a private party.

Officials from the club have met the Kilkenny County Board, which has now launched an investigation into what happened.

The chairman of the club has said it will ‘cooperate fully with any investigation’.

Meanwhile, a leading organisation that works with women affected by prostitution said X-rated images showing GAA players posing with two naked escorts said, ‘they hardly represent the GAA as a safe place for any woman or girl’.

A Ruhama spokeswoman said what happened ‘reveals the depressing reality of sportsmen who believe the best way to celebrate a win is through the sexual objectification and use of women’s bodies.

‘This comes at a time when the GAA is making massive efforts to encourage girls and young women into the sport. But these photos and videos, which have gone viral online, hardly represent the GAA as a safe space for any woman or girl. Instead, they reveal a tragic ‘lads’ culture’ where young men cheer on the treatment of women as nothing more than sex objects.

‘If money changed hands in this situation, then those men involved have also broken the law – since March of this year it is illegal to pay for sex in Ireland.

‘An extremely disappointing week for Irish sports stars as supposed “role models” for young girls and boys.’

‘Deny everything. This is serious now’