Jimmy Geoghegan: One rugby club’s role in helping to banish the winter blues

Recently I had cause to pay a visit to the home of Ashbourne Rugby Football Club. I was despatched to cover a Leinster League Div 1 game between Ashbourne and Monkstown. It's always a pleasant experience because you are invariably warmly welcomed to the club's fine, spacious grounds on the Milltown Road.

Anyone who has visited the the home of this progressive club in recent times can hardly have failed to notice the series of wise, moral-enhancing sayings or aphorisms printed on signs erected on railings along the passageway between the dressingrooms and the main pitch.

They are sayings that carry profound messages indeed. They are meant to help dispel the gloom, the sense of hopelessness many feel, particularly at this time of the year, when the post Christmas buzz can be replaced by the 'January blues.' They are sayings such as: 'Your team mate will always help you up' or "Tackle your feelings" or "You're not alone let's talk." There are other signs that carry profound words intended to bolster faltering morale and battered spirits. "Pain is real but so is hope." Also on display is this memorable one: "If you feel life is sinking try positive thinking."

In recent years people in and around Ashbourne have been shocked at the number of suicides that have taken place in the area. They were so shocked and saddened at the loss of young lives to suicide that in 2018 they set up a group called ASAP (Ashbourne Suicide Awareness and Prevention).

Among the leading lights in that group is Eugene Kennedy, a great stalwart of Ashbourne RFC down the years. He has been closely involved in ASAP from the start. He was deeply saddened by the needless loss of young lives, some of them involved in sport. He felt compelled to do something about it. Others in the community rowed in, no doubt sharing Eugene's deep-down conviction that something needed to be done.

The mission statement of ASAP is to "strive to educate, inform and inspire our community in the pursuit of achieving positive mental health, whilst adhering to norms of best practice in the sector." A laudable objective indeed.

The rugby club have clearly supported such moves with the profound sayings on the railings aimed at bolstering the mental health of those who need it.

The sayings are also a reminder of just how important sport can be in people's lives. How it helps to build resilience. If you get knocked back during the course of a game you have to get up and get going again. If you lose one week, you have to seek to win the next. Sport is all about absorbing the blows, dusting yourself off and moving on - to the next move, the next game.

Being part of some sporting community has huge benefits in terms of providing mental and physical strength - not that it's a totally safe refuge.

The former Leeds Utd player Gary Speed, outwardly at least, looked to have everything going his way before he died by suicide in November 2011. He was manager of Wales at the time and doing well in that role. He was very much part of the football community, yet he clearly felt there was no way out.

The importance of sport in people's lives has been underlined during the Covid pandemic. When sport was stopped it left a huge vacuum. Thankfully it hasn't been stopped in the latest wave, although restrictions are ongoing.

Those involved with Ashbourne RFC deserve praise and recognition for such initiatives as posting those messages up at their ground. We can never get enough positivity.

My own favourite among the sayings is that one that goes: "Run when you can, walk when you have to, crawl if you must - but never give up."