Really good piece in the Telegraphy. Sunderland goalkeeper Steve Harper: I was out of work and felt myself slipping back into a dark hole Steve Harper says the PFA is failing players at the end of their careers. please log in to view this image Coming out of the shadows: Steve Harper has suffered with depression in the past Photo: REX A few minutes after signing for Sunderland last month, Steve Harper walked slowly, in the fading winter light, across the training pitches of his new club towards a set of goal posts and felt a rush of excitement for the first time in months. As a 40-year-old professional footballer, Harper’s career prospects were gloomy at best. Sunderland offered him a way back, but he knows it is only a temporary reprieve. He is a third-choice goalkeeper, brought in by manager Sam Allardyce as a mentor to England Under-21 prospect Jordan Pickford, as well as injury cover. Seven months after leaving Hull City, in which he has combined coaching at Middlesbrough Academy with media work, the offers to carry on playing had dried up. As hard as he tried to fight it, Harper knew he was being pushed into the darkness of depression. He has been there before, trapped, confused and desperate to find a way out of the mental maze. please log in to view this image Steve Harper has closed his Twitter account after receiving abuse for joining Sunderland He had spotted the warning signs and so had those close to him. He knew this day would come, but despite preparing himself financially for retirement, Harper insists nothing had prepared him for the mental strain. He is critical of the Professional Footballers’ Association and has complained to it about the lack of work it does in this area. He has ambitions to become a goalkeeping coach, vague thoughts of becoming a manager, but, like a sailor in a shipwreck, he cannot let go of his buoyancy support. He wants to play on. “People kept asking, ‘Have you retired?’ and I just felt reluctant to say that,” said Harper, who looks lean and trim in his Sunderland training kit. “I just couldn’t let go. I had lots of phone calls in the summer, three clubs in India, one in Denmark. There was talk of a move to Tottenham Hotspur and QPR, on the proviso Rob Green left, but he didn’t and that fell through. That was the start of August. Then the calls got fewer and far between. “I bottomed out when I found myself playing tennis with my wife and a couple of friends on a Wednesday morning. I thought: ‘I need to get back into football.’ She’ll laugh about that, I hope. “I was a 40-year-old, out of work footballer and it is brutal. To go from the regimental routine of football, to having nothing to do with your days… It’s like being in the military without the risk to your life. “The structure, everything is provided and done for you. To come out of that, overnight. It’s horrible. Thankfully I could see it coming. I knew the warning signs.” please log in to view this image Harper was very popular in Newcastle, but it was at St James' Park where he was first diagnosed as suffering with depression Harper has friends in the game who have suffered with mental illness. Not all of them have recovered. He has seen their marriages break up and the money run out. He has seen them become dinosaurs in a technological age. He lashed out at the PFA at a charity dinner, accusing it of failing him. It has got in touch to check he is OK and to point out the courses it runs. He still feels more can be done. “You think you’re prepared,” Harper added. “But it just leaves a gaping hole in your life. It tests you mentally, it really does. “I was diagnosed with depression in my early thirties at Newcastle. I spoke to good people. I had a mild case. Not being in the side, it got on top of me. I was in a bad place for a while. “That experience undoubtedly helped me, because I could feel myself slipping back into that dark hole, where life feels as though it is closing in on you. I think that prevented it happening again. “A lot of players aren’t so lucky. I was in a position to do the necessary things to stop it engulfing me, but there was a gaping chasm in my life and I needed to fill it.” He has filled it, for now, at Sunderland. But he knows he will have to go through it all again at some point. He would like to go into coaching “but everyone is told to do their badges, everyone thinks about that towards the end of their career, but there are a finite amount of jobs and they very rarely go to first-time applicants”. Harper continued: “I was at a dinner recently and the PFA had a table there. As a former PFA representative, I tore into them. I said: ‘You do a lot of fantastic work for players when they are playing, but too many people of my age, or a year or two older, are either getting divorced, going bankrupt or struggle with depression.’ “They have been in touch with me since and told me about the courses they do, but I was PFA rep and if I don’t know about them, more needs to be done to support players in that transition. “It needs to addressed at 17 or 18. Even if you are lucky enough to do this for the next 15 years, you’ll live for another 50 years, probably, and what are you going to do next? “It’s easy to forget it’s not just a case of saving for a rainy day. It’s a case of saving for the rest of your life. Retirement is like a very long monsoon season and you need to build an ark to get through it. It’s not just money, you miss the dressing room, the banter, the comradeship.” Sunderland will benefit from Harper’s presence. He is a father figure in the dressing room, after all he is the same age as some of his team-mates’ parents. Harper, though, admits he is still saddened that Newcastle United, Sunderland’s biggest rivals and the club where he spent 20 years, effectively abandoned him. “I’ve got a PhD in Newcastle United,” said Harper, who played in every club competition during his two decades at St James’ Park. “I could probably be a university professor in what it takes to be a footballer in the North East. please log in to view this image Harper enjoyed highs and lows during his two decades at Newcastle Photo: GETTY IMAGES “I was sad that Newcastle chose not to allow me to pass on that experience. I went through everything you could do with them, title challenges, cup finals, relegation, playing in Europe. “I like to think I know what you need to be successful as a Newcastle player. Hopefully, I can pass that on in the Sunderland dressing room now, because the two clubs, the fans, have far more in common than they do differences. “If the players here want to ask me anything, I’ll always try to help. I hope I helped Tim Krul and Fraser Forster come through at Newcastle and they are both international goalkeepers now. “Jordan can do the same. He is keen as mustard. He has had a taste of the first team and he wants more. I want to help him achieve that.” Pickford needs to listen to his mentor.
It's difficult to read self-pity in such stark terms, it's never good to see someone shed their self-respect so openly. All those years ago he had options. Being number two, or three, is an option; many decide to take less money and lower league status to play, or at least compete for first team football. Many get to forty and find their football days gone, but the job they have done to support their love of football and their families goes on to their sixties - they hope, but they might have to adapt along the way. Steve wants to try entering a ground through the turnstiles, have a beer on the concourse, queue for his ticket (sic), fit travelling to a game between shifts, hospital appointments and whatever else life throws at him. If he has an illness that effects the way he views things then there is help out there for him, just as there is for others. Articles like this, poking his head well above the parapets of his comfort zone, really do him no good at all. my heart bleeds for him, having to close his bloody Twatter account, whatever next.
Personally, I would be perfectly happy for him to come back in a coaching capacity at City some day...people with experience like that would be invaluable working with academy players for example. Some of you are being a bit harsh here I think
Quite often footballers get a lot of critical comments due to the money they earn, but at the end of the day they are still normal human beings, and its clear more needs to be done to support them.
Agreed, with all the money in the sport, some should at least be put aside as a pension scheme if just to ease the burden of no longer playing a game.
Completely disagree with you. Well done to Steve Harper. Its only when people speak out we move things forward. http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/about-us/about-our-campaign/time-to-talk Its also MH Awareness week in May https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/campaigns/mental-health-awareness-week 1 in 4 of us will suffer with a MH problem. People like Fez pouring scorn on people who talk about this will just make the "ordinary" people keep schtum and suffer in silence often with horrible outcomes.
A journalist interviews him and he displays an extraordinary level of honesty and openness, yet you criticise him for that? Being wealthier and more successful than most of us doesn't immunise someone from depression. Have a word, Fez.
But it does get you help as I have read countless stories of famous people get help and support over the last few months and get lauded for it, It's not that simple for the man on the street, if they mention anything they either get ignored, told to man up or get a pair or any other BS while their condition goes untreated and gets worse.
Psychologically if someone has a personality constuct around a particular view of themselves it can be very hard to adjust if that is undermined. Those Sunderland supporters are pricks for attacking him just for joining them, absolute idiocy really. We could have kept Harper for longer and I think Bruce found that out with the McGregor problems.
Totally agree Chaz. It takes a much bigger man to acknowledge that there is a mental health problem and to discuss it. Well done Steve Harper.
Okay, you are entitled to your opinion, but you are not entitled to misrepresent what I have written. I have not poured scorn on him for speaking about it, but I have questioned his wisdom in letting his thoughts be quoted in a newspaper - thoughts that really ought to be challenged, illness or not. No, I don't enjoy reading the obituaries. As it happens, Monday 15th February is a significantly sad day in our family history, we lost a grandson on that day in 2102 and another on the same day, just one year later, 2013 - both to my daughter. This was then exacerbated by the stress that brought on a seizure for my son-in-law, a loss of licence and severe career hardship; not to mention the mental pressures brought upon my daughter who fights a constant battle with the Black Dog while running a family and holding down a stressful job for a leading bank - I haven't yet heard her whinge to us, let alone a bloody journalist. What word would you like me to have, as I think I have a fairly good idea of what depression is and how that affects the family and their well-being. But enough of me qualifying my right to an opinion, as the 'likes of' me relies more on reading what is written. Let me muse a little more and explain that I did not criticise his illness or his right to treatment; but why not consider his words (or those of the journo), not mine: He saw it coming, he knew the warning signs, I would assume his family did too. Most options he would have to help prepare himself would have been within his reach. But read on ... This seems a strange thing to do when I go on to read ... I don't know about the rest of you, but I see the same problems of relationships, employment and finances just about everywhere I go. But then I was astounded to read he was the PFA rep for his teammates and he didn't know about the courses, he hadn't been arsed (in his very busy schedule) to try and learn something of the organisation he represented - it was all their fault, wasn't it? Come on, does that really sound reasonable? Perhaps, at 40yrs of age, he should think of it more as a career juncture, rather than retirement. Isn't that what we all do? He is now with Sunderland, he was born there, he is a Mackem, move on FFS. It could have been a decent article about surviving football in the north east, if it had not dwelt on the self-pity and difficult to understand blame he apportions others. Sorry about the length of my reply, but I thoroughly dislike arseholes who take an important issue, such as mental health, and try and use it as a broad-brush means to continue their mindless internet pettiness.
"but you are not entitled to misrepresent what I have written. I have not poured scorn on him for speaking about it, but I have questioned his wisdom in letting his thoughts be quoted in a newspaper - thoughts that really ought to be challenged, illness or not." So calling it "self pity" and " it's never good to see someone shed their self-respect so openly." Isnt sneering at a bloke who's admitting he suffered depression in his 30's and felt himself slipping again. Get over yourself you pompous prick. There is no internet pettiness, you're making yourself look an idiot. If posters are calling you on it then take another look at your attitude.
I'm not surprised by your response, as you would rather bicker than look at what he has said with some sense of reality. Do you think he had no time to prepare for his 'retirement'? Not even when his first encounter with depression brought it to his attention in his early thirties? He chose to be the PFA representative and, despite a very obvious milestone in his early thirties, he neglected to look at what the PFA offered in the way of support to him and his teammates. Do you think he is right to rant at the PFA. Do you not think he might of been able to help himself a bit more? I'm not sneering at him, is that how you see the questioning of someone making questionable statements? Should he be allowed to say anything he likes, even if it might not be particularly accurate or fair? He admits himself that his depression was not too serious, it was manageable, not incapacitating, he was able to think, rationalise and move on. Some are not so lucky. I'm happy with my attitude, Chazz, I am able to sympathize with his illness and I can certainly empathise with his illness and it's cumulative effects; maybe you can, too. What I can't do, Chazz, is simply accept that just because he, or his journo (I did qualify that) say something, that it is either correct or constructive to the very valid situation he is discussing. I think there are quite a few who feel the same way as me; we care, but we prefer to be measured and rational in how we support such issues - if you label that as pompous, then I think it says a lot more about you and your inability to allow others an opinion, coupled with a ready ability to abuse from the other side of a keyboard. Sad.
****ing hell. Even this gets turned into a Fez boreathon all about him. In which everyone else is wrong. You really are an old bitter odious **** Fez.
Hold the front page , 'PFA criticised for not doing enough ' shocker . As a rep how much did he do for all the kids who are spat out of the system early, not earning the money he did ? Or those with career-ending injuries ? Shouldn't he have been aware ? Or does it only matter because it affects him now? Reads like his biggest problem is how to fill his spare time-is this what passes for depression nowadays? Like the military ? Poor love , nobody to supervise him, to tell him what to do and where to be . Woe is me. If he has depression, ok , but what is that to do with the PFA ? Does nobody have personal responsibility anymore, or are you excused it if you're well enough known to get your 'story' in the papers ?
