Scott Wilson
February 28th, 2008
ONE weekend - two very
different routes to a
hospital bed.
On the one hand, we have Arsenal
striker Eduardo Da Silva,
rushed to Selly Oak Hospital in
Birmingham to repair a fractured
left fibula and an open
dislocation of an ankle joint.
On the other, we have former
England international Paul
Gascoigne, detained under the
Mental Health Act at a hospital
unit in Middleton St George.
Both can be deemed to have
footballing injuries, but football
is only comfortable dealing
with one of them. Like the rest
of wider society, the sport continues
to regard mental illness
as taboo.
Physical problems it can handle.
Eduardo's injury was a
sickening example of what can
go wrong on a football field,
but it was also proof of just
how adept the game has become
at dealing with conditions
that would once have
ended a career.
The nation was repulsed by
the graphic images of Eduardo's
leg buckling under the
force of Martin Taylor's mistimed
tackle, but within 24
hours of the incident occurring,
doctors were confidently
predicting the Croatia international
would be back to full fitness
within nine months.
Such linearity is one of the
main reasons why football is
able to deal with physical injuries,
no matter how appalling
they may initially appear to be.
A player gets injured, undergoes
a specific course of
surgery, embarks on a prearranged
recovery plan, and
hey presto, within a predictable
time frame, they are back to
their best.
Unfortunately, mental illness
doesn't work like that. There is
no quick fix in an operating
theatre, no tried-and-tested recovery
plan, and no point trying
to predict a point at which
a patient will have completed
their rehabilitation.
Mental illness is less structured
and more difficult to be
successful at, and for that reason,
football has tended to either
ignore the condition or
pretend that it is none of its
business.
Alcohol abuse? Well, lads
will be lads. Behavioural problems?
This is a football club,
not a creche. Anxiety and depression?
I don't think I would
be depressed if I was receiving
£50,000-a-week.
When Stan Collymore was diagnosed
with clinical depression
in 1999, he was hospitalised
in the same manner he
would have been if he had been
suffering from a range of similarly
serious physical ailments.
Yet groups at the very heart of
the game treated his condition
with a mixture of incredulity
and contempt.
Few, if any, professional football
clubs employ specialists
adept at dealing with mental
problems, and even the PFA,
the respected players' union,
appears unable to offer specialist
help to those who need it
most.
The Sporting Chance Clinic
came to Joey Barton's rescue
when his behavioural problems
resurfaced at the end of last
year, but that was an example
of a very specific organisation
offering very specific support
to a high-profile client who had
worked with them in the past.
For the majority of footballers
in this country, a mental illness
means a long and lonely struggle
with little or no support.
For former footballers, like
Gascoigne, the situation is
even bleaker. Once a player has
left the footballing fold, they
are effectively cut adrift. And
that, for a large number of former
professionals, is when the
mental problems start.
Retirement, as Gascoigne
has found to his cost, creates a
gaping void. Filling it, for
some, is nigh on impossible,
and an illness that began to
take hold during a player's
playing career can develop
alarmingly as soon as their
time on the field is at an end.
Is this football's problem?
Well, it should be. The game
takes so much from someone
like Gascoigne in terms of finance
and kudos, that it should
not be asking too much for it to
give something back in return.
That does not mean Newcastle
United, one of Gascoigne's
former employers, feeling
obliged to offer him a place on
their coaching staff. It means a
well-funded former players' organisation
offering specialist
support.
For that to happen the game
will have to accept that the
physical and mental variants
are of equal concern. While
Gascoigne's problems have
raised awareness of mental illness,
that day still seems a long
way off.
REGARDLESS of what you
think about the outcome of
Middlesbrough's appeal
against Jeremie Aliadiere's
dismissal for violent conduct
at Anfield, it has to be wrong
that it was heard by a nameless
commission of FA committee
men.
Nobody knows who these
men are - least of all Middlesbrough
- and it is no longer acceptable
for English football's
governing body to hold their
disciplinary hearings in private.
The FA are effectively
running a kangaroo court, and
such a glaring lack of transparency
and accountability
would be ridiculed if it was
taking place in a less-developed
region of the world.
The current system is wrong
on so many levels, but what if
Middlesbrough were to be involved
in a relegation battle
with Fulham and a self-confessed
Fulham supporter just
happened to be one of the men
charged with the task of handing
Stewart Downing a ban
ranging from anything from
one game to four? Would a
complaint over that be deemed
frivolous' as well?
9:37am Thursday 28th February 2008
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