He will know what you are thinking. Bad egg. Trouble. Smoking gun. Paul Carberry's rap sheet hangs over him today like the bedside chart of a man surrounded by weeping family. You've seen his face splattered across enough bad news pages to conclude that he must, indeed, answer to all of the descriptions above.

Breath tests are like lie detectors for jockeys. You don't bluff them. To most of us, it's easy to imagine how a few stiff drinks in the system might be seductive for anyone bound to a job of such unrelenting danger. Actually, to most of us, the routine courage of National Hunt riders is simply inexplicable.

But you can't self-medicate. Every jockey descending the steps of a weigh-room in silks carries a burden of trust to his or her contemporaries. Half a ton of highly-strung horse-flesh in your care is the equivalent of a loaded gun. The saddle is a serious place. It can't be the next stop from a bar stool.

So, the wrath of the sport has now come crashing down around Carberry's ears. Naas was his second offence. The Turf Club probably felt compelled to make an example of him this time. He will, thus, be stood down from Irish racing nine days from now and remain idle until January 24. You look at the jump calendar for that period and the severity of the punishment becomes apparent.

It's like a salmon fisherman left inactive during spawning.

There will be many indifferent to his cause, mind, because Paul Carberry isn't everyone's cup of tea. He has been in a few too many little skirmishes. The 'prank' in '05, when he set fire to a newspaper while on board a flight from Spain, still sends shivers down the spine. Paul would have seen it as no more than horseplay, which -- maybe -- tells us much about his concept of danger.

He is famously brave in the saddle. Awkward, obstreperous mounts have never inhibited him. Just as he might win a blue riband race (like the '99 Aintree Grand National on Bobbyjo), he will pitch up at a small, midweek meet on the equine equivalent of Genghis Khan.

Mantra

"Work hard, party hard" has long been the preferred mantra of many sports people for whom risk is an everyday condition. Maybe a part of Carberry warmed to that mindset. Twenty years ago, when he was setting out on a path trod so eminently by his father, Tommy, there wouldn't have been anything like the same scrutiny.

Jump-jockeys and drink didn't cause the sport a second thought. Out of the cruel ritual of endless wasting and routine injury, the consolation of a few jars never seemed anything less than reasonable.

Now, though, lights shine everywhere. The same drugs police who pursue syringe-riddled cheats, pitch up at race meetings and rally drivers' briefings, essentially inviting people to blow into a bag.

As such, the jockey's obligations to his trainers and owners become just as urgent the night before a meeting as they are on the day itself.

It should be stressed that Carberry, as Noel Meade indicated last week, didn't turn up at Naas "jarred." Indeed, the trainer suggested that, had he eaten that morning, the jockey would not have failed the test. Then again, Paul Carberry couldn't have eaten, could he? Not with an unnatural weight to make. Eating would probably have seen him fail a test of another kind.

So, you think of where he finds himself today. Suspended for 30 of the richest days in National Hunt racing. Fined £5,000. Humiliated. This veteran of a hard game, whose entire persona has been shaped and framed by total absorption in horses.

Ferdy Murphy, one of many English-based trainers frequently indebted to Carberry's talent, believes shyness to be a central issue in the jockey's troubles.

He's certainly not overtly comfortable trading banalities with either connections or media. He'll never be a raconteur. There's a reticence to Paul Carberry that subsides only when he is on horseback.

So, one can but imagine his inner mortification now. He's 35, the light of a great career just beginning to dwindle. Meade believes that age has deposited a small brittleness in Carberry's body. "If he gets a fall now, he doesn't take it well," said the Meath trainer last week.

Who is to say what that process does to a jump jockey's confidence?

No matter, Carberry has committed himself to a period of counselling which, ostensibly, looks like an admission of deeper troubles. We can but wish him well in that.

And we might remember that the sin he committed in Naas was one of carelessness, not evil. He went to work with the smell of alcohol on his breath. He let his connections down and was punished. People clucked their tongues.

There but for the grace of God went half a nation.

- Vincent Hogan

Irish Independent