Duke’s mission helps players with mental health issues
● In revealing TV documentary, former Scotland star Morrison tells Prince William of his anguish after close friend’s suicide
There was a time when a footballer’s only contact with royalty was a quick handshake before a cup final. That has all changed now that Prince William is on a mission, as Scotland star James Morrison discovered.
The Duke of Cambridge is passionate about mental health and on a tour round clubs big and small to increase awareness of the problem and get people talking about the risks, especially to young men, he persuaded Morrison to open up about a friend who’d taken his own life.
Visiting the midfielder’s club, West Bromwich Albion, for last night’s BBC1 documentary Football, Prince William and Our Mental Health, HRH emphasised that suicide caused the rawest kind of grief.
“There can be so many unanswered questions,” he said. “Could I have done more? Should I have done more? Why did they do it?”
Morrison told him: “My friend took his own life. He was very sociable, loads of mates. There was no letter. I asked myself: ‘Why?’ ”
Team-mate Charlie Austin added: “He came round family barbecues and was always the life and soul. But was he living in this bubble where you don’t want to speak about stuff?”
Three-quarters of male deaths in the UK are suicide, the biggest killer of young men. “It’s scary, frightening and real but men don’t want to talk about it,” the Duke said. “If we can have a major impact on lowering the rate that would be a success.”
Prince William is an Aston Villa fan. We saw him celebrating a Villa goal with sixyear-old Prince George and the third in line to the throne admitted football was even more important to him since becoming a dad. The game had a deep, spiritual resonance for many, he added, but was also an “escape”.
The programme showed him drinking pints down the pub while watching an England international with Frank Lampard, the Chelsea manager admitting that in his playing days no one revealed their emotions. “I wish I’d had more maturity about that,” Lampard said.
The Duke visited England’s St George’s Park HQ where Villa’s Tyrone Mings admitted: “No one cares if you have a problem mentally. You can’t carry that into a game. So I pay a psychologist to help me through the week.”
But HRH began the documentary at grassroots level, meeting the players of Northampton’s Sands United, a Sundayamateurteamforbereaved dads where, according to one, playing games on the anniversaries of their child’s death was “equally beautiful and terrifying”.
Joe Hart, the former England goalkeeper, fronted up to the Duke that his mental health issues stemmed from “not playing, not being wanted”. He hoped that football would institute a better support system before any more players were “pummelled into the floor”.
In Swansea, meeting another troubled soul at the lower end of football, Prince William theorised that the horrors of two world wars resulting in so much grief had caused Britain to “internalise”, adding: “We have to question whether that’s relevant today to the way we live. It’s not.”
In Preston, HRH met a North End fan diagnosed with a bipolar disorder who had contemplated suicide. There was a moving scene in which he was reconciled with his father who admitted he didn’t have the emotional tools to deal with his son’s distress.
There was hope, too, for a better outlook for ex-england
Under-21 player Marvin Sordell who once threatened to take his own life, the money footballers earn convincing him that no one would sympathise with his issues.
Now a dad but without a father’s influence in his own life, Sordell admitted he was nervous about parenthood. Prince William empathised: “When you have been through something traumatic, your father not being around, my mother dying when I was young, emotionally things come out of the blue. No one’s there to help you. I’ve found that overwhelming. [Becoming a parent] is one of the most amazing moments and also one of the scariest.”
HRH: “Your dad would be proud of you.”
Sordell: “And your mum would be proud of you.”