Roscommon senior hurling manager Justin Campbell has a lot of perspective on life.
Having struggled with alcoholism in his teens and early twenties, he is now an addiction counsellor and member of Croke Park's National Health and Wellbeing Committee. Balls.ie spoke to him about addiction, hurling and the extraordinary phenomenon of betting markets being offered on school games.
By the age of just 14, Campbell had lost both of his parents to cancer. The loss led him to discover alcohol:
Most of my issues probably came from grief. That caused an introduction to alcohol from an early age, which seemed to be a crutch for me around self-esteem and self-confidence.
I found that alcohol was an amazing substance, it sort of allowed me to be myself in many ways and give me false self-confidence and self-esteem that I had been lacking.
As Campbell fell into excessive drinking, he also played hurling. He won an All Ireland club title with Kiltormer of Galway - a final in which he was Man of the Match - and he also won an All Ireland under 21 title with Galway in 1991.
Whilst he loved hurling, and would play in the 1993 Senior final against Kilkenny, the prevailing culture meant that Campbell found it difficult to avoid alcohol.
The fact we had a lot of success from an early age, prompted a lot of celebration, I was like “this is going to happen every year”.
Our difficulty at that time was knowing how to deal with success from an early age, and the amount of celebrations that followed. It was the culture of that time you might go to the pub for five or six pints after training.
Today it has gone to the other extreme where you are training six or seven nights a week, so it’s trying to find a happy medium is the difficulty.
Campbell was twenty-five before he decided to tackle the problem, saying that he had realised that he was not developing as a person, that dependence on alchol had left him "immature" and lacking in motivation.
He sought counselling, attending weekly AA meetings and spending time among other recovered addicts. Most remarkably, throughout this process, Campbell ran a pub. He laughs that "while people might find that crazy, but I just looked at the pub as a business and it didn’t concern me, once I didn’t drink I was alright".
Buoyed by his experience, Campbell left the pub and trained as an addiction counsellor at Trinity College. Today Campbell meets those seeking help in Ballinasloe, Roscommon, Oranmore and Athlone on a weekly basis and also gives regular lectures at colleges and schools and presentations before clubs.
As the Roscommon manager, Campbell believes he has a responsibility to help out those among his panel who are struggling, making them aware of the counselling services offered by the GPA. It is a responsibility that Campbell believes extends to other coaches:
Unfortunately, for managers, because we are under pressure, there is a tendency to pick the best team and forget the guy who is not playing to his full potential, or have the time to sit down with him and find out what is going on with him.
I think if we can bring managers and coaches together for this. Statistics show that after parents, generally the next person who is most important in a sportsperson’s life is their GAA coach.
There is a huge trust and respect between the player and the coach, and we can build on that to keep our communities safe from mental health issues.
These are sentiments echoed by Waterford hurling manager Derek McGrath, who spoke in December about Maurice Shanahan and his own role in his hurler's plight.
Among the former Galway hurler's myriad duties, this week he gave a talk alongside Niall McNamee to Tubber GAA club in Offaly on the dangers of gambling addiction.
To Campbell, gambling is a devastating addiction that can act as a gateway to other addictions. It is made even more dangerous by its accessibility: over fifty percent of gambling is done via mobile.
Exacerbating this issue is the wide variety of GAA matches which have a betting market. These include club matches and Schools' games, and Campbell is fiercely critical of the latter market, calling it "morally and ethically wrong":
The most worrying of all was that at Leinster Schools Level there was a betting market on sixteen, seventeen and eighteen year olds which is absolutely morally and ethically wrong.
I talked to somebody pretty high up in education and he told me that they do have blocks on their mobiles in school areas, but that doesn’t stop them from betting on themselves outside of schools.
I would query and ask the parents of Ireland to have a serious look at this: do they want a betting company to make money on their sons at fifteen, sixteen and seventeen.
Campbell admonished the legality of these markets, and confirmed that the Health and Wellbeing Committee he sits on is challenging the laws.
I think there is something seriously wrong that this is legally allowed to happen, and I know that the National Health and Wellbeing Committee hope to do something about this, they are very unhappy.
Last year, Roscommon won the Nicky Rackard Cup under Campbell's management and were promoted to the Christy Ring Cup. What will a successful 2016 for the Roscommon hurlers?
We are down a few players from last year through emigration and retirement. That said, I think Roscommon hurling is on the up, I think we could do well in the league and if we can stay in Christy Ring, that would be a success for us.
We are never going to match them [the Liam McCarthy counties] because we only have seven clubs to pick from. Anywhere football is the primary game, hurling will be secondary and that’s just the way it is, and we don’t have the competitiveness at club level. I have no doubt that the players I have could compete in McCarthy Cup if they were from other counties where the club scene is more competitive.
With Campbell at the helm, Roscommon should have no problem being competitive.
Those looking to contact Justin can do so at his website, justincampbell.ie
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