Greg O’Shea has been forced to clarify he wasn’t paid to promote a charity campaign on Instagram.
On Thursday, the rugby player backed Unicef’s ‘Get a Vaccine Give a Vaccine’ campaign, after receiving his Covid vaccine before he heads to the Tokyo Olympics.
In the post, the 26-year-old wrote: “I’m lucky to have already received my vaccine and most people in the country will be too. However not everyone in the world is as fortunate as us!”
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“UNICEF is leading the biggest ever vaccine procurement and supply targeting low-income countries. The target is 2 billion vaccines by the end of 2021, so far 95 million doses have been delivered.”
“This ‘Get a Vaccine Give a Vaccine’ campaign gives you the chance to help towards vaccine equity across the world and to protect all of us. You can support by making a donation at ‘unicef.ie’ please.”
Greg later appeared on his Instagram Story, and admitted he was “baffled” by some of the comments he received over the post.
The Limerick native said: “I’m actually so baffled by people sometimes. Like commenting and messaging me and giving out and giving me abuse saying that my Unicef work was a paid post.”
“Obviously it wasn’t a paid post. How could you think that. It’s charity work. I’m just trying to help out in any small way I can.”
“I was lucky enough to get a vaccine because firstly I’m an asthmatic, so I needed it, and secondly because I’m going to the Olympics.”
“So every Olympic athlete going from Ireland got a vaccine. And then I was like, you know what, I want to help out.”
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“So I linked with Unicef and they are doing a campaign ‘Get a vaccine, give a vaccine’, So I’m just trying to help support that.”
“Honestly I’m just so baffled by people sometimes,” he added.
Greg is preparing to travel to Tokyo for the Olympics next week, as he’s part of Ireland’s Rugby Sevens team.
