Souths juniors start mental health plan
RUGBY LEAGUE: The Southern Suburbs Tigers’ junior kit was noticeably different at the weekend.
In stark contrast to their traditional orange and black, the players wore bright yellow socks – a simple but effective way for the club to promote something close to its heart.
Yellow dominated Toowoomba’s Gold Park on Saturday as the Tigers celebrated their involvement in the NRL’s State of Mind program.
Southern Suburbs club registrar Sharon Currie said it was an active move by the Tigers to promote positive change.
“As club, we decided that mental health was an important issue we needed to address,” she said.
“It (mental health) can affect anyone – parents, players, young, old – anyone.
“So we decided to get on board with the NRL’s State of Mind program.
“Former NRL Clinton Toopi visited the club and we worked with him to develop our own mental health plan.
“The big day we had at Gold Park was just a way of acknowledging we’d finished that plan.
“Everyone got behind the day. We had coaches in tutus doing twirls when someone scored, we played our girls’ games on the Saturday instead of Friday, it was a lot of fun.”
The big day does not signify the end of the club’s campaign, though.
“We are not finished yet,” Currie said.
“The key thing for us now is to keep things going.
“We have the plan in place, but we need to keep working at it.
“We know there are going to be times when our players might talk to their coaches about things other than football.
“And we want to help our parents if they need it as well.
“We’ve raised that bit of awareness and more people are talking.
“Now we need to encourage that to keep happening.”