Clifford opens up on struggles
FORMER Ireland underage star Conor Clifford has opened up on his battle with depression when his career went off the rails.
Clifford is nearing the end of a six-month ban for betting offences during an unhappy period before he came home from the UK.
The Dubliner was the captain of a Chelsea side that won the 2010 FA Youth Cup and was called into the Ireland senior squad a year later on account of his huge teenage reputation. But he failed to make the breakthrough at Stamford Bridge and slid down the leagues.
In an exclusive interview with today’s Irish Independent, the 26-year-old has expanded on just how badly he was struggling in his final days across the water.
He said that his parents Paul and Catherine ended up bringing him to a psychologist after they realised the extent of his difficulties.
“I felt so embarrassed telling them what was up because they didn’t know how bad I was,” he said. “I didn’t want them worrying.
“I got caught in a bubble earning great money and I just thought it was going to last forever. So I took my foot off the pedal.”
Conor Clifford admits he was sucked into a bubble as a rising star at Chelsea before his career veered off course, eventually leaving the Dubliner serving a ban for a breach of betting rules. But with the support of his family, Clifford is feeling mentally and physically strong again and ready to fulfil his potential
FOR Conor Clifford, the road to realising that he needed help started with a visit from two worried friends.
With the sun setting on 2016, his old Chelsea colleagues Adam Coombes and Jacob Mellis, close friends that still speak every day, dropped by. They sensed something was up with the Dubliner and those fears were confirmed.
The door opened to a dark and messy apartment. Curtains drawn. Their friend, who was now playing for Boreham Wood in the National League (the old Conference) had started to skip training and could barely bring himself to get out of bed.
His relationship had broken down and he had fallen out of love with football to the extent where he was wondering where his life was going. But he hadn’t been able to explain that lethargy to anybody, the complete absence of enthusiasm for anything. It changed on that day.
“I literally just broke down in front of the lads and that was that,” he explains.
There was a time, Clifford admits, that he wondered if sportspeople speaking about their depression were using it as an excuse.
“I would look at them and think, ‘What have you got to be depressed about,” he said in a Dublin hotel last week, before pausing. “How stupid was I?”
Coombes sought guidance, calling the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) to ask if Clifford could be provided with professional help. That led to an initial consultation about his mental health. But Clifford felt he needed to get back to Ireland, and to the family home in Palmerstown.
“I packed a bag, went to the airport and didn’t tell anyone I was coming,” he says. “I just turned up at the door in a state.”
SUPPORTERS
His parents, Paul and Catherine, his biggest supporters, knew their son was going through a bad patch in work, “but they didn’t really know the half of it,” he admits.
There was a natural shield he put up, a defence mechanism, which is part of his personality. Professional football is an environment which can encourage individuals to strengthen that wall.
Clifford was the child star recruited to Chelsea on a long and lucrative contract. An FA Youth Cup winning captain at 18. He was called into a senior Ireland squad at 19 on the strength of his reputation. The rapid slide down the ladder was always going to dent confidence but, from a distance, he was able to say that everything was all right.
He did sign for Dundalk, and uttered all the right statements about getting his career back on track. However, that process of finding a club had coincided with testing conversations at home which culminated in his parents bringing him to a psychologist qualified to deal with his problems.
“I felt so embarrassed telling them what was up because they didn’t know how bad I was,” he says. “I didn’t want them worrying about me. But I had to tell them, and they brought me to meet someone.
“It was harder than in England with my family in the room – my Dad stayed in because I wanted him to. But it was weird. Once I started talking, I couldn’t shut up. I felt such a weight off my shoulders. It’s not natural for me to talk like that,
because I keep a lot of stuff inside. But it was a release. It’s hard to explain.”
The problem, ultimately, was the toll that the fall had taken on him and the niggling feeling that he could have prevented it, much as his story is a tale of what-ifs and if-onlys.
“I was kinda the blue-eyed boy,” he says. “Everything was going great. I got caught in a bubble earning great money and I just thought it was going to last forever. So I took my foot off the pedal. I went from that high of everything going well to wondering how I had ended up in non-league, with no idea of where I was going.
“I’d fallen out of love with the game, I hated it. I hated life. The more loans or moves that don’t work out, the more you get knocked back, the more you get forgotten about and the more you get down on yourself.
“I am comfortable to say that it (depression) is what it was. I honestly didn’t know what it was myself, why I was miserable going back to an apartment on my own and then didn’t want to get up in the morning or open the curtains or go to training.
“I would recommend to anybody going through depression or feeling horrible, that the best thing you can do is speak because you feel 100 times better afterwards. I felt unbelievable when I did.”
Talking really was therapy. “I left that room,” Clifford says “And I just felt like I wanted to go out and run and keep running.”
That new-found strength would be tested again last autumn. He was called into the office at Dundalk to be told that the FA wanted to speak to him. They had discovered he had bet on football matches in his jurisdiction during the tail-end of his time in England.
Clifford wasn’t involved in any of the games but the rules breach was clear and a worldwide six-month ban was handed down by FIFA. This meant engaging in any kind of official football activity was off limits. No training. No going to games. Not even coaching kids. With his contract expiring at Dundalk, it was a devastating blow.
The timing was especially poor because of the allegations going around the League of Ireland at that juncture related to betting. His name entered that storyline.
“There was a lot of stuff in the news about Athlone at the time,” he said. “I didn’t want people to think I was match-fixing, which I wasn’t. I believe that any player that does that should never play again.
“I got a lot of stick on Twitter and that. Messages to my inbox. People calling me a cheat. And there were people in the local area that didn’t have a clue about the story and saw betting and assumed whatever.
“I even had someone come up saying they’d heard I’d been betting thousands, that I’d put ten thousand on this game and that game. I was like ‘What? That’s ridiculous.’
“With my bets, I was bored because I was doing nothing. Fivers and tenners. Just for the interest in watching games that night; lads would be talking about it on the bus. The max bet I did was 15 quid and the total was around £800. I wasn’t winning either. I did know I wasn’t meant to be betting but I just felt it was so small and who was I? A non-league player? How would they know?”
The news broke on the day of Ireland’s World Cup qualifier with Moldova.
“I was sitting with my family and I was devastated. It was embarrassing for me and embarrassing for them.”
The punishment would test his well-being, especially as adapting to life at Dundalk was a work in progress.
“Even though I was in and out of the team, I was enjoying being with that group,” he continues. “I wasn’t happy to not be playing, but I was happy in myself. Forget about football. I was in a better place, and that came as a kick in the nuts.”
He went on a break to Thailand to get away from it all, and then learned the shocking news that his old Chelsea youth team coach Dermot Drummy had passed away suddenly, a tragedy that everybody who knew him is still struggling to comprehend.
Drummy had even spoken with Clifford about a reunion at Crawley Town in what proved to be his last job in football.
“He used to be a taxi man, a black-cab driver,” says Clifford, with a smile. “And every day at training, before he’d start, he would bring us in and say, ‘Listen lads, we’ve got the best job in the world. People are slogging away in factories, but look at these lovely pitches, this lovely gear, the bibs. He would bang on about how much he loved his job.”
Clifford has tried to bring an enthusiastic mindset to his exile, and his support structure is invaluable.
His new girlfriend, Laura, has become an important part of his life. He still lives at home, where his mother gets up at the same time every morning to cook a healthy meal to kick off his day, while his father has helped with some training runs.
The average day involves gym work in town in the morning with his good pal and personal trainer Iano Farrell in St Catherine’s Community Centre in Dublin 8, swimming in a hotel fitness centre at Liffey Valley in the afternoon and on certain evenings the passionate boxing fan heads down to the St Matthews Club in Ballyfermot for a hour of intensive training with the gloves on.
At St Catherine’s, a council facility, some of the workers have a kickabout in the indoor hall and he joins in sporadically to practice his ball work.
That scene is a long way removed from his teenage days in the leafy surrounds of Cobham, Chelsea’s base which is situated in an area caked in wealth.
He wasn’t fully prepared for life away from there on a whistle-stop tour of the lower leagues.
“In Cobham, every car that goes past is a Ferrari or a Range Rover. There’d even be lads who hadn’t played a league game coming in with a Range Rover or BMW. Leaving Chelsea, it hits you like a ton of bricks when you’re not getting that money.
“Did I get sucked into it? I had a nice car, maybe not compared to the other lads But in terms of going out and spending thousands on clothes and going to the best restaurants and all of that. Yeah, I did get sucked into that, definitely.”
The solitude of the ban has allowed the 26-year-old to fully make the transition from looking back to properly looking ahead.
His focus now is on creating new memories. Managers have called to check on his status and he is confident about what he could achieve in the right environment.
“I feel once I get a run of games I can be the best midfielder in the country, without a doubt,” he asserts. “I’m not being big-headed, it’s how I really feel.
POTENTIAL
“I haven’t fulfilled my potential whatsoever and have so much to prove, not only to myself but to other people that have written me off after seeing me come home to Dundalk and not set the world alight.”
He does feel strong and healthy, physically and mentally.
There was no return visit to his psychologist; there has been phone contact yet he does believe that the initial release was all that he needed.
Getting back into football is the priority now with his exclusion formally ending on April 2.
He left school after his Junior Cert and is thinking of starting his coaching badges soon because the game is all he knows, although, in reality, he has learned a lot about life
too. What does appeal is the idea of educating youngsters who think they have the world at their feet when scouts in club jackets are promising them the sun, moon and the stars.
Nor does he want his own experience to define him. The words ‘exChelsea’ tend to always precede his name in any sentence, and he is keen to park that now.
“I’m sick of talking about it,” he asserts. “I want to make a new story.”
As a kid, he was embarrassed by the huge family entourage that turned up for his matches. Now, he is counting down the days until they can come and watch him again.
Like any boxing fan, Clifford knows that a few heavy blows can leave a man on the ropes and he’s no longer afraid to admit there was pain. But he’s ready to come back stronger.
I FEEL ONCE I GET A RUN OF GAMES I CAN BE THE BEST MIDFIELDER IN THE COUNTRY, WITHOUT A DOUBT. I’M NOT BEING BIG-HEADED, IT’S HOW I REALLY FEEL