After Speed, why the football family should look after its own

By Ian Holloway

Published 23:59 03/12/11

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Football has cried a river following the tragic death of Gary Speed.

Managers, players, and the fans who pays our wages, have been united in grief because we have lost one of our own.

Everyone has been asking the same question since Speedo apparently took his own life last weekend.

Why?

Perhaps we will never get the answer to what drove one of the game’s gentlemen over the edge at the age of 42. Maybe he has taken his demons to his grave.

But the revelation that a number of players have since made their own cry for help by asking Tony Adams’ Sporting Chance clinic for assistance suggests to me that but for the grace of God go so many others.

Our sport is fuelled by ­testosterone and machismo. It always has been. Mental illness is taboo.

We are taught from an early age not to show any weakness. You are told to identify any flaw in the ­opposition and ruthlessly ­expose it.

There’s nothing wrong with that if you’re a little suspect in the air and you undergo extra coaching or training to improve how high you can jump.

Or maybe you notice that your opponent isn’t quite as fit as he should be, so someone like me would try to run him to a standstill.

The difficulty is when someone has problems that are psychological. In football, we’ve never been good at fighting ­battles we can’t actually see.

In our game, a weakness is there to be either ­covered up or exploited — whether it’s physical or mental.

In society as a whole there is a stigma ­attached to mental illness.

You can multiply that lack of understanding 10-fold in the cruel environment of ­professional football.

Anyone asking for help is usually told to grow a pair and man-up. Like so much of our game, the only answer is to show you’ve got balls. It’s a question of masculinity.

To survive in this game, you have to be seen to be 100 percent fit in mind as well as body. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got problems at home or you’re feeling the pressure of a ­relegation battle or you’ve got 30,000 fans screaming at abuse at you. You are a professional. It’s your job to carry the hopes and dreams of your club’s supporters.

Most of us, most of the time, can cope with that pressure.

It is what we live for and we thrive on it.

But I am just as certain that, for some, it can really damage your health. George Best was the greatest footballer I have ever seen. He could do anything with a ball even in the days of terrible pitches and big defenders given licence to kick lumps out of him.

But I am sure that the ­pressure he was under both on and off the pitch turned him into the alcoholic who drank himself into an early grave at the age of 59.

It doesn’t get any easier when the floodlights fade. A man who has been the hero to ­thousands as a young man can feel washed up and ­finished at the age of 35.

Some people struggle without that adrenaline rush. Is there anyone out there who doesn’t feel for a flawed genius like Paul Gascoigne?

I saw how Sporting Chance helped Clarke Carlisle overcome his ­problems with ­alcohol addiction when I was ­manager of QPR and I’ve got

to say the ­service ­offered by Peter Kay can play a key role in helping ­players ­exorcise their ­demons. But Clarke was big enough and clever enough to ask for help — and that is the key.

With all the money that is swilling around our game, we should be able to educate our footballers to understand that asking for help doesn’t make you any less of a man.

There should be a safety-net put in place that allows anyone who has been involved in our game to seek help from experts like Peter Kay without having to worry about who is going to pay for the treatment.

Like everyone else in the game, my thoughts are with the loved ones that Gary Speed has left behind.

But now, let us make sure that the Football Family really begins to look after our own.

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Gary Parkinson was my youth-team coach at Blackpool when he suffered a serious stroke last year. Now he only communicates by blinking his eyes. I will use my next column to speak more about Parky but I ask Sunday Mirror ­readers to do what you can to help. For details see garyparky.co.uk.

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I’m happy Movember has ­come to an end. Growing moustaches and beards in November to raise awareness for prostate ­cancer is brilliant. But try to give someone a rollocking when, if you look to your ­assistant Steve Thompson for support, all you can think about is Colonel Melchett from ­Blackadder!

Classy AVB needs time, not a spending spree  

Poor Steve Bruce is a victim of geography  

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