Looking back at his 20-year career in the Irish League, Aaron Hogg remembers the first time he went to the bookies with his team-mates. A teenager at the time, he did not know the journey it would set him upon. It was a road of debt, broken relationships and severe depression.
The goalkeeper was not the first Irish League player to have a gambling addiction, and he will not be the last. But now, eight years since he last placed a bet, he is at the heart of an initiative to try and help those who need it through the new player-led Gambling Support Group (GSG). Its introduction coincides with increased sponsorship of the men's and women's Irish Premiership from betting companies from this season, while the two League Cups and a regional tournament are also sponsored by bookmakers.
From culture to investment and criticism, BBC Sport NI examines the Irish League's relationship with gambling. How Premier League shirts will change with gambling sponsor ban When Hogg started gambling it was for fun, with fruit machines and playing pool as a teenager. When he stepped into men's football with Crusaders, he would start to go to the bookies with team-mates before matches.
Then he was introduced to hose racing and roulette. Things spiralled from there. "Gambling's a progressive illness," he said.
"You don't just start off by doing a bet and then all of a sudden you lose your house." Ultimately, playing football became his "release". "It was brilliant because my head was completely concentrated on that game and everything else went away, I was at peace for 90 minutes. "But then I walked back into the dressing room, and as soon as you sit back down your world comes back down on top of you.
"As a gambler, you don't deal with any of your problems. You shy away from everybody, and you try and get more and more money to gamble and dig yourself deeper and deeper in the hole." The Irish FA's betting regulations in Northern Ireland say that players cannot bet on any matches involving their team - at men's, women's or underage level - or league, and no one can place a bet on their behalf. Michael Carvill, head of the Professional Footballers' Association in Northern Ireland, said it was something he had noticed in a 15-year career at the top of the Irish League.
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