IN YEARS GONE by, Jack Carty would head into the dressing room after Connacht games, listen to his coach, and then immediately take out his phone to find out what people were saying about him on social media.
There were times when he even searched his name on online rugby forums to take another look at how his performances were being rated.
Firmly out of the habit now at the wise old age of 27, the Ireland international out-half didn’t recognise at the time just how poisonous it was.
Negative comments like ‘Jack Carty was shite’ or ‘Why is Jack Carty our out-half, can we not get someone else?’ would gnaw away at the young out-half.
On the flip side, Carty also took gushing praise after good performances too seriously.
He’s the latest player to feature in the ‘Tackle Your Feelings‘ campaign run by Rugby Players Ireland, with the Athlone man detailing how he let social media make too much of an impact on him.
“I would have done it after every game,” said Carty on a video call this morning.
“I’d have waited until after the coach spoke. If it was after a loss where you don’t want to be seen on the phone, you’d kind of turn into the corner or your locker and type your name into Twitter.
“The first five or six things you read would have dictated how the game went in your mind, that’s how I saw it back in the day.
“I would be on Boards and typing in my own name and I used that to see how I was getting on as a player.
“It can go the other way as well – if you play one good game, you can think you’re the best player in the world.
“I probably let the positive parts over-amplify in certain circumstances and when I got negative stuff, I let it dictate how I felt for three or four days. I looked for validation not from coaches or players but maybe from people online.”
Looking back now, Carty realises that reading too much into the social media commentary negatively impacted his performances.
“It would have affected my outlook on how I went into the next week because I would have had a hangover effect from the previous week and reading about myself,” said Carty.
“For that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, it would have been at the forefront of my thinking coming into training – thinking that I’d played a bad game and building up these cortisol levels about making a mistake being brought up in a meeting but they were literally nothing, just some person’s opinion online.
“I remember with my girlfriend at the time, say after a Friday game, my weekend would have been ruined because I would be thinking about what a certain person had said. It probably did affect how my performances went because it affected my preparation the following week.”
Carty recalls how he came face-to-face with someone who had been very critical of him for a long period but whose negative comments had suddenly stopped amidst the out-half’s excellent form last season.
“On Facebook of all things, there was a certain individual who I mention in the video that, over a period of time, had written stuff. I remember it was so unhealthy for me, I actually had screenshots of what this person had said on my phone.
“I was using it as a thing for motivation. Some people might think that’s the right thing to do but I was on my holidays in Greece and I was looking at what this person had said to try and motivate myself to get better.
“You can see in the video that there was a function I was at and I saw this fella. He said, ‘Howiya Jack’ and I was thinking, ‘Will I say something to this person because I’ve obviously had this at the forefront of my thinking for such a long time.’
“I eventually said it: ‘Look, some of the stuff you said… and you’re not really writing anything about me anymore,’ and he goes, ‘That’s because you’re playing well.’
“When I look back on it now, the fact that I had spent so much time thinking about what I’d say to this person, it was such a liberating experience because I realised, ‘Why did I put so much thought and anxiety into what that person was saying?’ I could have controlled that at the very beginning if I had had the tools at the time.”
Carty has worked hard to build those tools in recent years, visiting sports psychologist Niamh Fitzpatrick, who helped him to focus on the fun in training and playing.
He says he uses the Tackle Your Feelings app extensively to monitor his mood and balance his feelings around rugby. Keeping in touch with his support network – family and friends – is key too.
Carty would “love to say it was like flicking a switch” in terms of moving past allowing online comments to impact on him, but reckons it took 18 months of incremental steps to build up resilience.
RugbyPlayersIreland / Twitter
RugbyPlayersIreland / Twitter / Twitter
“All the things I had done stacked up on top of each other. People think success looks like that [he signals a constant rise with his arm], but it’s really like this [ups and downs] and you manage to get to where you are. It’s about peaks and troughs.
“You’re never as good as you think you are and never as bad as you think you are.
“This variety of tools took the emotion out of when I played well and when I played poorly. That kind of kept me in equilibrium and I tried to get some level of consistency in my performance and that was done through preparing my week, having goals every week, and motivating myself to get better.
“Since that, I’ve went down and dipped again but fortunately enough, I’ve bounced back again. There have been times, like after the World Cup where I probably didn’t play as well as I could have, but I had the ability to speak to people and it made it a lot easier.”
Carty feels these tools are more important than ever in the current situation the world finds itself in, with people unable to physically meet friends and loved ones.
“I suppose you’re cooped up in the house now so external from rugby your mental health… things that I’ve done like reaching out to family, Skyping, video calls.
“Just because you’re away from someone doesn’t mean you can’t talk to them.”
Tackle Your Feelings ambassador Jack Carty is encouraging people to be supportive and avoid trolling or scaremongering when using social media, especially now following the outbreak of the global pandemic, Covid-19. Jack is lending his support to the #ImTakingControl campaign which encourages people to ‘Take Control’ of their mental wellbeing using principles from both sport and positive psychology.
Well i think most people can understand that, i would back mickey harte to the hilt in any argument against RTE. I heard the skit and was shocked at the time, the guy that did it is just not funny.
Rte are muppets.
I agree with the 2 previous comments. John Murray has a smugness about him that reminds me of his predecessor on Radio 1 who has since gone on to ‘bigger and better things’
Murray is a muppet. His attempts at humour are pathetic. I switch off in the morning as soon as the news is over. Sadly there is a dearth of talent at RTE. Perhaps lowering salaries to appropriate levels might remove the smugness?
John Murray (who makes nice bobs on the side when RTE buy shows; like the recent Charlie Bird excursion to the South Pole, which he was involved in producing), is woefully ill suited to what he is doing now. He’s as funny as a broken leg in a marathon. Like Mooney in the afternoon, his signature tune has me reaching for the next station within nanoseconds.
He is a current affairs man, and that’s it. Des Cahill is a colour reporter, not a snorting ill prepared sports correspondent with stilted delivery and a jarring manner. Pat Kenny is a well briefed incisive and thorough interviewer, who happens to be devoid of spontaneous persona, so they gave him a talk show for eleven years, at the bones of three quarters of a million for each of those years. Tubridy is a vacuous, bubble dwelling non entity, who only came to life in recent times when Fianna Fail were mentioned, and now he’s numero uno, and falling fast. Duffy was a vox pop guy, who was anointed by Gaybo, beyond his talents, and now makes the Lahvline his own personal soapbox, treating callers with sheer bad manners, abruptness, and sighing condescension.
The late Gerry Ryan, who drove me cracked with his on air consumption of any passing foodstuffs, his constant plugs for Harry Crosbie and his other buddies (in exchange for freebies of course), and his arrogance, had, despite all those failings, more charm, and more personality than the whole flippin’ lot put together.
He was probably one of the only on air personalities in that institution, (with the exception of a fair chunk of the news team, Morning Ireland et al.) who wasn’t promoted beyond their station, as it were.
RTE is a living breathing example of the Peter Principle, with a healthy dash of nepotism.
Rte should be shut down
What a choice of song…idiots. What planet are they on. John murrays show is scripted and produced, there’s more than him to blame. And who leaked the contents of the private and confidential letter received by Rte? The postman?! The cleaner?? Professor plum in the library with the candlestick??!
All GAA players should boycott RTE this weekend and send the smug fcukers a clear message.
Ryan, with respect Gerry Ryan most certainly was promoted outside of his own show…secrets, school around the corner, Ryan confidential, operation transformation and on and on. Rte seem to use the same handful of bores to do everything! But leaking a letter and handing a "satirical" script to John Murray of all people to read out??? What planet were they on. Did they think people would turn on the hugely respected Mickey Harte instead of them??? Eejits.
Oh, I quite agree, Jaynie. I wouldn’t be looking at him with rose tinted specs or anything :) I remember The School Around The Corner too!
But my point remains that his bread and butter, the morning slot on 2fm, despite the faults I bored ye all with, had far more individuality attached than John Murray’s efforts.
His producer would want to be…I won’t say what, but as you allude to, there is a large and bloated degree of support behind the guy or gal on the mic, especially and almost exclusively wrt RTE, and it’s ridiculous that none of them had the skill or the cop on to say, “Hang on a second!”
Very insensitive, I’m a Dublin gaa supporter and it’s true to say we are like one big family.its very upsetting what the Harte family and John went through.shame on ya RTE.if I wasn’t going to the game tomorrow I wouldn’t bother watching it on tv.
‘One big ‘family” – when the footballers play Croker is always full (or nearly so) , when the hurlers have a game never more than half full. Lots of ‘family’ members don’t do their duty when the caman is involved.
Mickey Harte has had a tragic year, and in the face of all that stress he still pushes forward his beloved Tyrone to greater heights. The sketch was insensitive for sure, and would understandably have annoyed Harte at this time. It isn’t fair, however, to paint all of RTÉ as ‘muppets’ – this is an organisation made up of many individuals – doing their best and, more often than not, doing a great job. The problem with comment sites like these, I find, is that the negative voice is quite often the only one that bothers with being heard. John Murray is a fine presenter, so is Mooney etc… Not perfect, but who is?
Totally agree with you there, wouldn’t exactly call him a natural! In such bad taste! Did not one person on the team say…hang on a minute…maybe not the best choice of song…oh and probably best not to skit about the private and confidential letter our boss leaked, sorry, I mean received