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I just hated my life. I had absolutely no concept of how things will get better. I had no preparation for life after football. I had no concept of myself as anything other than a footballer.
RICHIE SADLIER WAS just 24 years of age when he retired from his first career as a footballer.
A hip injury that reoccurred, and reoccurred, had forced him from the game he loved. Even though much of his seven years at Millwall was plagued by injury, a final night on the pitch (in Stoke) saw him enter an even darker period of depression, with added drinking.
“I did get to a place. The worst it got for me… I retired in the first week of September. By December, I had contacted a solicitor. I had started writing a will. I lived in a house with a swimming pool in the back yard. My plan was to jump in there and not get out,” the now 38-year-old reveals in the latest Second Captains’ podcast.
The Dubliner has spoken previously about his mental health difficulties (publicly first following the death of Gary Speed in 2011) but never the extent of his worst personal crisis.
In conversation with Niall Quinn during his show, The Player’s Chair, Sadlier talks about how he was ‘drowning in alcohol to numb the pain’.
A tumultuous career had seen him sidelined not only with the hip, but with a broken arm and a complicated hernia. Once talked about as The Next Big Thing, he had to figure out another option. Today, he says he couldn’t see one.
I didn’t even have a name. I was a Millwall player. It made absolute sense to me to bow out at that stage.
As Quinn also discusses the difficulties – and “rage” – he faced in retirement, Sadlier acknowledges that society now allows, even has an appetite for, sportspeople talking “about what they have gone through”.
Describing “the moment things had got really bad”, the TV pundit and psychotherapist brings listeners back to his club’s Christmas party in 2003 – mere months after his retirement.
At the time, he was living with his then-girlfriend and another friend. They did not know what was being played around in his head.
“I was even unsure whether I should go – I wasn’t part of the squad, I wasn’t a Millwall player. The lads were great, one by one, they’d give me a little pat on the back and a hug and the slanty head, ‘God love you’.
“The 12th or 14th time, I thought, ‘This isn’t fun’. And I met Tim Cahill in the jacks, and to give him credit, what he wanted to say was something along the lines of, ‘Do you know what, having seen you go through what you’ve gone through, makes me appreciate more what I’ve got and I’m going to enjoy it more, and hope you’re ok.’ What he actually said in his drunken haze was, ‘Do you know what? The fact that I can still do the one thing you can’t makes me fucking buzzing.’
“I thought I was going to start crying.
“I quickly made a beeline for the exit. By the time I got there, I was crying. It was lashing rain and pitch black. I lived about a mile and a half away and I couldn’t get a taxi because all the drivers are Millwall fans… That was the point that I thought I had no place in the world. I’m lost.”
Sadlier (‘after a few mad, coincidental things happened’) started seeing a therapist.
Today, inside and outside of football, he believes people should be open about how they deal with depression and other mental health issues.
“I think a lot more could be said about what people do to help themselves. A lot of people can identify with feeling shite – you don’t have to be a sportsperson. OK, you’ve had that feeling. Where was the support? What were your options? Mine, I went to a therapist.”
He says he can discuss his suicidal thoughts today because it’s like “describing a different person”.
It’s not even a little part of me anymore which is why I’m quite comfortable talking about it here and now.”
During the hour-long conversation, both he and Quinn show their desire for a better system to be put in place for footballers as they head into retirement.
Calling it a “difficult time”, Quinn was grieving “for this death I had in my career”.
He “did all the wrong things”, “looked for sympathy”, “got done for drink driving” and “was horrible to live with” for about six months.
Hear the full conversation here (paywall).
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Imagine if they never existed, and Dublin City Council applied for planning to build them now, there would be people on the streets complaining that they will destroy the Dublin skyline! I guess people just don’t like change!
They have a history. They deserve their place. Seeing them towers when you fly back into Dublin is a good feeling. They’re a beacon for home. The cynics want them destroyed.
If they were building them nowadays the protesters would be out calling them a blot on the landscape.
Just because the pig-ugly things happen to be old some people decide that they are pretty.
Yay. Like it or lump it they are a much recognised part of the Dublin skyline. Sure they aren’t the prettiest things but it seems it’ll be a long time before we move away from the low rise bland – o – boxes we currently build.
This is the problem in this country. We will fight to save chimneys and to have tall buildings blocking out the sun but when it comes to the beautiful environment all around us we fail to see the true gift that we have
Poolbeg “towers”? They’re chimneys.. And they’re an eyesore. We should get rid of them and build a 300 ft statue similar to the one guarding Braavos harbour in Game of Thrones. Perhaps of a hurler brandishing a hurley or simply Roy Keane with his arms folded looking miffed.
Yes, now that would be money well spent.
I’m not from Dublin so I have no idea what the attraction is but anyone visiting the city they are a disgusting eyesore. It seems to be a Dublin trait tho, why else would Liberty Hall, the Heineken building and the rest of those monstrosities be standing. I was down beside Dublin Castle last night, seriously what other capital city would allow such a modern eyesore to be built at its gate beside City Hall.
Liberty Hall just needs a decent face lift. Solved
Looks to me like they ruin every one of those pictures. Far more beautiful bay without them.
They are a quintessential part of Dublin. They are our twin towers. There isn’t a more beautiful sight than seeing those chimneys as you come back home to land at Dublin airport.
Dublin bay itself is pretty impressive when landing as is howth
Not those towers
Yeah I am starting the paint fund next week if all 1.2 million dubliners and dublin commuters give a euro each we should have enough to get the scaffolding out and a nice bit of paint to freshen them up a bit.
You’d be doing well to get the scaffold built for 1.2 million. I’d imagine they’ll be painted by rope access though.
Just two decaying old industrial chimneys. Do we have to keep everything that’s old?
I don’t know of any other city which wants to hang onto eyesores like this – of no historical (or other) significance.
Badly stuck for scenery in Dublin if two chimney towers are all the rage.
Why can’t we have buildings that tall?
Everyone saying that the towers area eye sore cope on they have mean there more the 30 years and anyway what about that monstrosity on O’Connell street but that represents what Dublin has become a massive hypodermic needle
Hideous things… Tear them down. :)
I’d love to climb them, I wonder if they would let me?
I can assure you they won’t!! I’ve worked in the power station and every time I’m there I think about climbing them. The view would be incredible. Unfortunately the ladders only start about 20 metres off the ground to stop people climbing them. Hopefully the company I work for gets the painting contract!!
I work for ESB networks and have a 20 meter hoist that will get us up to the ladders I’ll meet you there in the morning bring your camera.
Sound. I’ll get started on a method statement …. ya know, just in case.
Well taken photos, but they’re just two big ugly industrial looking chimneys. I’m not a Dub though so maybe I wouldn’t understand.
I’m a Dub and I don’t really get it.
Two very decent chimneys. Im not a chimney man but for those chimney lover’s out there may I suggest any industrial Russian city, Germanys Ruhr, or closer to home middelsboro in north east england for a far larger selection of Industrial chimneys. Or for those on a budget a trip to lanesboro in county longford where an almost identical Chimney treat awaits.
Wind Turbines would suit that site.
(Queue the luddites who love the the long dead past.)
Wind turbines don’t suit any area. I’m saying that because I’m a Luddite, quite the opposite. They’re massively inefficient. I’d rather the existing power station turned nuclear.
James Shelley’s pic is great.
God, those chimneys are ugly. I remember when they built the second.
From memory the I original plan was for 4 of them!
Worked down there years ago … Some sight when your standing beside them one is a foot taller that other 680ft v 681 one looks much bigger looking up as it is thicker… Originally the red and white stripes were painted by travelling up inside the towers in a lift during construction and out over the top in harness (allegedly )!!!! I hear insurance is a big problem re the re painting etc either way some sight
I’m not from Dublin so I suppose I must tread carefully as it doesn’t affect me directly but I would hate to have to look at these things every day. I can’t understand people’s affection for them. Personally, I’d knock them and never look back.
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