Dundalk FC launch Harry Taaffe Mental Health & Wellbeing Programme

Dundalk FC launch Harry Taaffe Mental Health & Wellbeing Programme

Thursday night saw the launch of the Harry Taaffe Mental Health & Wellbeing Programme at the Oriel Centre.

The programme, named in memory of the late Dundalk F.C. groundsman and videographer who died by suicide in 2020, will be coordinated by local mental health officer Derek Pepper and is designed to educate and increase awareness about mental health and to try to challenge the stigma associated with mental health difficulties.

Representatives from Dundalk FC, Fyffes, the Taaffe family and local mental health groups spoke at the event as did former Dundalk FC - and current Republic of Ireland - manager Stephen Kenny.

Dundalk FC Chief Operating Officer Martin Connolly spoke of his hope that the safeTALK (Suicide Alertness for Everyone) workshops due to be run in the community as part of the programme will equip people to recognise signs of depression and mental health issues.

“As we as a club aim to rebuild and develop our links with the community, we recognise that community is a powerful setting to promote positive mental health and wellbeing because community organisations, groups and services each provide a potential for delivering mental health promotion across a wide range of population groups and settings.

“The community perspective recognises the important role that various community organisations, some of which are represented here tonight, outside of the health sector, play in promoting positive mental health.

“We very much hope that through our profile in the community we can get people talking about their mental health.

“Primarily, our aim for this programme is to create public awareness of suicide and mental health issues whilst providing information on suicide prevention, mental health recovery and signposting for local services.

Mr Connolly finished by fondly remembering Harry Taaffe saying that the day Harry died:

“A little piece of Oriel Folklore died with him. A person who had played such a huge part in our incredible story was gone.

“Not a player, manager or coach, but a person who had given every bit of himself to make our team, our club and our town just a little bit better.

“We want to welcome Maria, Orla, Shane and Aidan and Harry’s extended family here tonight. Like them, we continue to mourn his loss, but hopefully this will help us celebrate his memory.”

Emma Hunt Duffy of Fyffes, who are sponsoring the initiative, spoke of her hopes for the programme:

“When Martin approached us to sponsor the new mental health and wellbeing programme, we knew this was the right thing to do.

“Football and sport in general can play an important role in opening up discussions and it is our hope that this programme will go someway to breaking the stigma around talking about mental health.

“We are looking forward to getting the programme underway and we know that many people are finding the post pandemic environment incredibly tough.

“We are planning, as Martin said, for Fyffes employees so that all staff can be better equipped to recognise the signs of depression and mental health challenges.

Working on getting the community recovery trust underway, and dividing out the funds among local groups in a meaningful way.--

“Sometimes it’s the really little things that are the big things that can give people hope and really impact them when they need it most.

“If this programme can help one person, it’ll all be worth it.

Harry’s son Shane Taaffe, speaking on behalf of family, thanked the club for launching the programme:

“It’s an honour to be associated with such a great case. I’d like to thank Dereck, Emma, Martin and the rest of the guys. It’s massive.

“The family really appreciates the support and help that everyone has given us.

“As Emma has said, if it can help any family to not go through what we have and help families get the help that unfortunately we weren’t fully guaranteed of getting.

Dereck Pepper, local mental health officer, spoke of his hope that the initiative would permeate throughout the local community and get the message across that it’s ok to talk about mental health.

“I spoke [with Martin] about two and a half years ago about it with great enthusiasm.

“What we’re essentially trying to build is a platform for awareness so that our fanbase will become more aware of the importance of maintaining positive mental health and protecting our mental health.

“When we use that term mental health immediately, people associate mental health with illness. There’s always a negative connotation associated with that term mental health.

“One of the things I try to emphasise is that we all possess mental health… and our mental health will be challenged. Each and every person will experience emotional distress at some stage and will again in the future.

“One of the messages that we want to try to get across to people is that the experience of emotional distress and mental image is not abnormal. It’s not strange and it’s not different. It’s something that we all experience.

“If we can normalise the experience of that for people and get them talking about emotions then hopefully we will be able to put some sort of effort into creating a more compassionate and kinder society so that people that do find themselves in distress will feel comfortable about talking to somebody else about it.

He also spoke about the importance of having someone there to listen.

“We all need to talk and we all need that shoulder that we can lean on and share our difficulties with, but the challenge there is thinking about who we can trust and who will listen to us.

“That’s the piece that we really need to work on most of all and I think that through the initiative that’s what we’ll try to encourage people to do. To not just talk, but to listen.

“We can talk about intervention and technique and all these different things, but it’s the simple everyday bits and pieces that we do for one another that can save somebody's life.

“We hope to advance that with the provision of the safeTALK suicide prevention training which I will be delivering myself and we’re going to start that within the club by providing training to the staff and Fyffes staff as well and get that ball rolling.

“We want people to know that the safeTALK suicide prevention workshop is there and it’s something that you can avail of through the football club and we hope that the football club is going to become a hub outside of clinical based support services, we want to change that and bring that discussion about suicide into the community.”

Finally finishing off the evening, former Dundalk manager and current Ireland manager Stephen Kenny shared some memories of Harry.

“Harry was a lover of his community. One of the things about him was that he was a champion of the underdog.

“He was always protesting about something and I’d be protesting against him protesting,”he joked.

“He was always there for anyone who needed him, and he had an amazing IQ actually, because when you think about the high level IT skills that he had to have to do what he was doing, he was ahead of his time.

“He was filming every angle of the game, he was up to date on every modern system and was clued in, at the cutting edge of sports analysis.”

Kenny also spoke of Harry’s ability to fix anything and everything around Oriel Park and the help he gave in acquiring grass pitches for the team to train on around the town during the winter months.

“Without all of that, there would be none of all our success. We all owe so much to him.

“He brought a lot of joy to a lot of people and I spent a lot of long nights in his company and he was a really brilliant person.

“Generally, I’d go back to his house [after a game] and he had a big cinema surround room and I could be watching back the game till two or three in the morning and he’d come in and find me asleep on the couch.

“He did so much for so many people and we should fondly remember him and this [programme] is great to have in his honour.