Andy Reid exclusive: ‘Footballers train their bodies every day, we need to be training our brains as well’ The former Nottinghaam Forest midfielder opens up for the first time about losing his parents and one of his closest friends

Andy Reid knew something was not right when he tried to fall back on the tried and tested methods he learned as a teenager and they simply would not work.

Many years before, when he was a 17-year-old midfielder at Nottingham Forest, Reid’s academy manager Paul Hart introduced group sessions with a psychologist, Keith Mincher, once-a-week. The young players initially thought it was a load of rubbish, but soon many of them were having one-on-ones with Mincher, so Reid gave it a try.

People discuss sports psychology now as though it is a modern revolution of recent times, but this is going back 20 years, and techniques Mincher passed on then would stay with Reid two decades later.

“Catch yourself thinking,” Mincher said, explaining to Reid that if he was in a bad mood – because he could be a moody player and there was “a bit of a stubborn Irishness in there somewhere” – he should consciously recognise the feeling, so that it became his choice if he remained in it.

Loss and ‘dark times’

Yet as Reid entered his early thirties, struggling for months on end with a groin injury that would not fully heal, experiencing a great wrenching loss in his life following the death of his parents, Dinah and Bill, within a year of one another and the suicide of a close friend, he would try to catch himself in the morning, but just kept on falling.

“It really scared me,” he says, looking back. “And for a long time, I didn’t know what to do. That period I was very, very down and would have been drinking quite a bit and I would have been taking things out on the missus.

“I lost both my parents within a year of each other, that really spun my head out. I really struggled. It was like another hammer blow.”

Reid flicks at the inside corners of his eyes, before continuing: “Where do I go from here? Football coming to an end, just lost both your parents. Our family was very close. It was such a massive thing.

“I’m not sure depression is the way of putting it. All I know is it was a dark time. I would’ve had myself down as being pretty mentally strong and I think people that would’ve played with me and that knew me would’ve said the same thing. If something like this can happen to me it can happen to anyone. I needed to speak to someone. I went to counselling.”

Opening up

Reid, 37, has never spoken publicly about all of this before. But he talks now, as we sit sipping cups of tea around a breakfast bar in his Nottingham home, at length and at some speed.

He agreed to meet after being taken aback by the conversation Marvin Sordell started recently about football and mental health. He, too, believes that mental health is an important conversation that must be had in football, and that it is still not being talked about enough. And that he wanted to share his story.

Amidst everything that was going on in Reid’s life around that time – the struggle to get fit, the death of mum and dad – he discusses another major blow.

Roy Foster – who went by the stage name Roy Stone – was a local Nottingham musician. He was “a bit of an old hippy”, Reid says, and they became good friends over the years, both sharing a passion for the guitar. Sadly, though, Stone took his own life four years ago, at the age of 46, after struggling with mental health problems.

“That was something within all that which really affected me,” Reid explains. “He wasn’t well and everyone was trying to help him as much as they could. It was a massive shock, because nobody ever thinks something like that is going to happen.

“Roy was a great guy. I can only imagine what it was like for his family. It was very sad. He was so young. The amount of people who turned out for his funeral was incredible. I remember thinking at his funeral: I wish Roy could see how many people are here and how deeply upset they all are and how much he’s loved and I don’t think he would’ve done it.”

Finding the light

That can be the problem: those in that dark place often find it hard to see all the light shining around them. Reid is surrounded by it now: he and wife Candice live with their two children, Oscar, seven, and Esme, two. Reid also has an older daughter, Saoirse, who recently began studying at Nottingham University and is around more too.

He never made it back playing from that groin injury but started a job as Republic of Ireland Under-18 manager, carrying in his managerial repertoire a recognition and understanding of players’ mental health that is perhaps lacking in other managers across the game.

Reid does not believe many of his Forest managers were aware just how much he was struggling. He thinks Stuart Pearce knew the most, but he places no blame on Pearce for not getting involved. “He had so much to deal with, without having to deal with my side of things,” Reid says.

But Reid is adamant that managers now should be more aware of it, if only so they can get the best out of a player, and at least ensure that the medical staff are dealing with any issues properly. It can be merely the small things.

The mental side of injuries

“One of the worst things about it for me was coming in and doing rehab, and at Forest’s training ground there is a big window that looks out onto the pitch, so I might be on the treadmill or the bike looking out and see all the lads walking out laughing and joking and training and that used to set me off. So then [physio] Steve [Devine] would get me training at different times so I wouldn’t see the lads.”

Candice was, he says, like a “counsellor” at the time, even if only subconsciously. “She was great. At my worst time Oscar was probably two, so he doesn’t remember all that much about it. Candice was fantastic and Oscar was great and I think it’s a very important part. Lean on your family as much as you can and use them as much as you can.”

He believes firmly that every club who can afford to should employ a full-time psychologist to work with players. “I find it staggering that all top club who have a budget for a psychologist wouldn’t have one. I understand not all clubs have a budget for one, but I think they should try and find one.

“We train our bodies every single day. When footballers aren’t on the pitch, they train to do the technical aspects of the game. Your brain is what tells you what to do. So how can you not train your brain as well? It’s massively important.”

It just might one day help catch a player should they fall.