Greg O’Shea has revealed he reached out to his ex Amber Gill, following the death of Caroline Flack.
The Limerick native won Love Island with the Newcastle babe back in 2019, but the couple split just five weeks later.
At the time, Amber accused Greg of breaking up with her over text, which he’s firmly denied.
Although their romance ended on bad terms, the rugby player reached out to Amber last year after Caroline Flack tragically took her own life.
Amber was particularly close to the Love Island host, as Caroline comforted her on the show after she was brutally dumped by Michael Griffiths.
Speaking to MailOnline, Greg said: “The thing with Amber and me is that we completely understand each other and no one else sees that.”
“We hadn’t spoken too much up until Caroline Flack passed and I reached out to her because I know she was so close to Caroline, she was the closest out of everyone in my season because Caroline really took care of her when the whole thing with Michael happened.”
“She got back to me and she was really kind and made sure I was all right and we laughed about everything that happened and said we wished we had dealt with it a bit better.”
“We support each other. She is the whole package, she has everything going for her, we have no hard feelings and I wish people would see there’s no bad blood between us,” he said.
Explaining what really happened between him and Amber, the 26-year-old confessed: “I have never actually come out and told my side of the story because my management and other people advised me against it.”
“When it was all happening I was like ‘I have screenshots, I can release a statement with screenshots to show people the truth’ but it was only going to add fuel to the fire and so I took the brunt of it. It was hard to bite my tongue but that’s just the way it played out.”
“We did the whole after the show thing and then it got to us speaking to each other away from the cameras and she asked ‘are we going to be boyfriend and girlfriend? Are we going to be a proper couple?’
“I said to her ‘realistically, I don’t know how this is going to work, you’re in England and everyone wants a bit of you, you have your clothing deals and I’m going back to Ireland and going to try and do the Olympics.'”
“I said ‘can we see how it plays out for the next while?’ But she didn’t really like that and got upset that I didn’t want to automatically be girlfriend and boyfriend – this was all on FaceTime.”
“She said ‘I don’t really want to be with someone who isn’t sure they want to be with me’ and we left it at that. The next day she got onto me again and she calmed down and agreed with me.”
“I told her ‘I can’t make you happy as much as you deserve, I can’t be there for you, maybe we should go with what you said last night and part ways now and be realistic about the situation.'”
“I think she expected me to fight for it but I had to be realistic and look at it as a proper relationship and not the Love Island winners.”
“This was all on FaceTime, then I had to go to training, so I put my phone down and I came back after an hour and my phone was blowing up, an article was released ‘Greg breaks up with Amber over text’ – I couldn’t believe it.”
“I rang her and said ‘what’s this story? Why would you do that? You know that’s not the truth’ and she said ‘it wasn’t me, it was my people, they just released it’ and she didn’t want it to happen. I said ‘well it’s happened now and I look like a terrible person.'”
“It went really badly. It’s two years ago at this stage but I was getting death threats, hate mail, my friends and family were getting death threats, my mother was getting calls – people messaged my mother saying ‘you gave birth to a little p***k’ and they told her to go and kill herself. It was very bad.”
Greg explained: “Her fans – it’s like an Amber army and I can see why because she has everything going for her but when they turned on me it was very scary. I could deal with it because I had the lads around me but it was very sad for my mother who got so upset. It got brutal for a while.”
“I lost 600,000 followers in a short space of time. Everyone flipped on me thinking I was a bad person. It’s been brushed over and I’m fine now and in a better place but it was really hard at the time.”
“Then I was like, do you know what maybe I’m not cut out for this crazy lifestyle so I tucked myself away back in Ireland and I kept training with the team full time.”
“I really went against the grain and didn’t follow the normal route you’re supposed to take,” he said.
“You’re supposed to move to the UK and do the events and the Love Island thing but the issue for me was that I had prior commitments and I was always going to come back to Ireland.”
“I went back to the life that I had before Love Island so that’s what really helped me to stay mentally strong. But it is really tough, the hate messages are a hard pill to swallow but I think I’ve dealt with it well.”
“I probably underestimated the negative side that comes with it, so if I was to do it again I’d like to be more mentally prepared,” Greg confessed.
