IF I CAN HELP ONE PERSON TO GET THROUGH THIS IT WILL ALL BE WORTHWHILE
GARY DEMPSEY had never given a huge amount of thought to mental health. At Aberdeen and Dunfermline, the football dressing room was a place for work, craic, play and nonsense.
Instructions from managers and coaches went in one ear before passing out the other side. When a team-mate fell quiet or sat quietly in the corner, it wasn’t the done thing to place an arm round his shoulder. A pent-up, macho environment, football dressing rooms worked better when people kept their problems to themselves.
‘I look back now sometimes and think of guys in the dressing room who would normally be bubbly and bouncy who went into their shell a little bit,’ the Wexford man says.
‘I can pick out one or two straight out who make me think: “Jesus, they obviously had something going on”. Whether it was something at home or gambling or whatever, I can definitely think of a couple of team-mates in hindsight.
‘But right there at the height of it? You were just getting on with it, training and having a craic.
‘Some guys used to train, get a shower and get home without saying two words to anyone. Other guys would be full of chat. Each to their own, eh?’
On May 22, 2004, Dunfermline led 1-0 at halftime in the Scottish Cup final against a Celtic side featuring Henrik Larsson, Chris Sutton, John Hartson and Stan Petrov. A 23-yearold midfielder, Dempsey won a runners-up medal at Hampden that day.
With hindsight, he wonders if he could have gone one better if he’d learned to listen to his emotional antenna and use the voice he has now.
‘We were winning and we didn’t really believe in ourselves,’ he recalls.
‘If I had known back then what I know now in terms of getting control of your mind and being positive, I would have won medals. I’d have had a much more successful career. But that dressing room was sitting thinking: “Celtic are going to come back…”
‘We were winning 1-0 and had beaten them at Parkhead two weeks before the cup final.
‘But we just didn’t ever really believe it would happen. That mental side of the game now is huge and a lot of the clubs now would have psychologists. In my day, these guys wouldn’t have been welcomed by too many players.’
Demspey is blunt enough to admit that his younger self would have laughed the guy he is now out of court. At the age of 39, he is emerging as an unlikely mental-health guru. An improbable amateur psychologist.
He makes no claim to doctoral qualifications or medical knowledge. What knowledge he has revolves around a belief that exercise trumps pep pills every time. Followers of the former League of Ireland star on Twitter have come to expect inspiring pep talks via video messages set to thumping dance music every second day.
His first effort — set in an Irish graveyard — was sombre, but effective. It started something.
‘A friend of mine, the chairman of a football club I’m involved with, committed suicide a few months ago,’ he explains. ‘We had the funeral in the church and one of the speakers in the church was saying that nobody knew he was suffering. She pleaded with people to speak up. We don’t have to suffer on our own.
‘For me, something just grew from there really.
‘I shot my first mental-health video in the graveyard and I don’t know why I did it there or what came over me — but it just went from there.
‘I said I would do it every day or every other day and people started reaching out to me.
‘I decided to use Twitter as a medium to tell people there is hope, there are people they can reach out to and speak to.’
Were he a player now, Dempsey admits he wouldn’t go near social media.
A VEHICLE for strangers to attack high-profile figures because they feel like it, Twitter has become a contradictory place. A forum where the very worst of human nature sits side-by-side with the best.
Some weeks ago, the father of Ollie Brown, an eight-year-old Dunfermline fan, wrote to Dempsey on Twitter.
‘Ollie was being bullied at school and it was horrendous,’ he says.
‘His dad sent a letter to me and it was heart-breaking. I thought a simple message back to Ollie wasn’t really going to cut it.
‘So we arranged to come over and see him and gave him a shirt I wore for Dunfermline against Celtic. Stevie Crawford, the manager, sent him a message.
‘The Scotland national team invited him to be the mascot against Israel before the game
went off. The response of Twitter to that was off the scale — fantastic.
‘But there are thousands of Ollies getting this in school playgrounds and in the home, and that’s just the kids. Jesus, you don’t really know how many people are suffering out there until you do something like this. ‘It was overwhelming really.’ When half the planet is in a state of lockdown, self-help is a tricky business. The co-owner of a fitness gym in Wexford, former Bray Wanderers, St Patrick’s Athletic and Waterford ace and Everton trainee Dempsey has established daily exercise classes on his Instagram and Facebook pages. While fitness guru Joe Wicks has the popular market covered at 9am every morning, Dempsey waits an hour and covers the backshift.
‘We are trying to help as many people exercise in the house as possible,’ he says. ‘We just want them to get that 45 minutes of exercise that might help.
‘Doctors give out pills for depression, but exercise is huge for headspace. We’ve been able to point some people in the right direction to get help and I’m an ambassador for the mental-health charity Back Onside in Scotland.’
Facing logistical and financial challenges, the suicide prevention charity appealed for help after the coronavirus pandemic placed them in an invidious position.
Assistance came from a large personal donation by Scotland captain Andy Robertson.
‘Robbo has dug us out a hole for now,’ says Dempsey.
‘The problem is that all the fundraisers and events we had planned are on the backburner until this crisis passes. Listen, if we help one person, it’s job done.
‘But we’ve helped more than one now and, with everything going on in the world at the moment, this work is more important than ever.
‘I’m not letting this go. I’m going to keep doing it. Hopefully people will keep talking to me.’