Domhnall Nugent helping others get ahead of the game

By John Harrington

When Domhnall Nugent walked into Cuan Mhuire rehab centre in Newry as a homeless alcohol and cocaine addict in 2019, his life was at rock-bottom.

At that moment he had two options. Continue down a road that could only lead to a tragic end or ask for and embrace help with every fibre of his being.

After three months at Cuan Mhuire he had hope again but was it was fragile. Counselling services he accessed through the GPA helped to further cement the cracks.

Pouring his energy into Gaelic games again was healing too, and in 2020 he played on the Antrim team that won the Joe McDonagh Cup Final.

That achievement would be the Hollywood ending to his story, but life doesn’t generally play out to a movie arc.

Nugent is the only one of the 12 people from his group in rehab five years ago who is still alive, so he knows better than to get complacent.

He continues to invest a lot in his own mental health by being honest about it, using the tools he has developed to maintain it, and seeking assistance whenever it is needed.

He has found too that in giving he receives. He has done great work in recent years to promote mental health awareness, most recently in his current role as a lead facilitator with the Movember ‘Ahead of the Game’ mental health literacy programme which highlights the importance of building mental fitness to deal with the challenges life and sport can throw at anyone.

So far the programme has engaged over 5,000 participants in GAA clubs across the 32 counties of Ireland. 176 clubs participated in Phase 1, with another 310 registered for Phase 2 which is currently being rolled out, and Nugent is a passionate advocate for the positive impact it is having.

“Whenever this programme came along it really felt like this is what we needed,” he told GAA.ie. “If I was to look back and think about what I needed when I was 14/15/16, it was to be given tools like this.

Not to be able to cope with things then, but when you get to the age of 17/18/19 and life throws a bit of adversity your way then you can revert back to your toolkit.

“It's not just even equipping you for your teenage years. I'm 27 and some of those wee things in terms of the tools we use, you can go back into it.

“The big things is building self-awareness and emotional intelligence. For young people to recognise and build a relationship with themselves. I just think that's amazing and so important.

“If I can have a relationship with me, and I know me more than anybody else, then I know how to self-regulate, I know how to talk to myself in the right way. I'm not going to beat myself up all the time.

“And then I can give that to other people and help them too. It's a ripple effect. The work being done is powerful, it really is.”

The Movember ‘Ahead of the Game’ programme involves two workshops, one for male or female U14/15 teams and one for parents and coaches in the clubs that Nugent and his fellow facilitators visit.

“This workshop is very simple,” says Nugent. “It's recognising what is mental fitness and what is physical fitness and marrying both of them together.

“If I had a physical injury what steps would I take to get myself ready to get back on the pitch? That looks like going to a professional and doing your rehab and all these things.

“So, what would I do if I was mentally struggling? I would see a professional, I would maybe go to counselling, I would take certain steps. So when you marry these things together you see that they're the same.

“It's about recognising symptoms of anxiety or depression. Ok, what can I do about this? You encourage healthy behaviours. What do I do then if this gets a wee bit too much? You then encourage the action in terms of where to go to.

“We have broken it down to a simple four letter acronym - ALEC. Ask, Listen, Encourage action, and Check In. So, it's sort of, be a smart Alec.

“So if you came to me with a mental health challenge I would ask about it, listen to you, encourage action in terms of what sort of help you should seek, and then check in afterwards on a regular basis. It's about being a good team-mate which is a strong message for kids. They get a wee card and they stick it in the back of their phones and they go away with it.”

When young people don’t talk about their mental struggles quite often it is for a couple of reasons. They believe that what they’re going through is a personal thing that wouldn’t be understood by others, or, for many young males in particular, there can be a fear of admitting what they might perceive to be weakness.

Nugent’s workshops break down these barriers to communication by showing that we all have mental struggles and they’re usually very common ones.

And when that realisation dawns in a group session, it quickly normalises the conversation and people become much more forthcoming about their own lived experience.

“It's unbelievably powerful,” he says. “There's strength in vulnerability. At the start of the workshop it's normalising mental health so we will put up a slide of sports stars and ask what these sport stars have in common.

“It's males and females, sport stars like Simone Biles, Tyson Furey, different people. We'll ask what people know about them and someone will say, ‘They're all really good at their sports’. Okay, what else? Someone else might say they all have struggled with their mental health.

“So we say, yes, these sports stars have struggled and they've all been very open about it so it's okay for us to struggle too.

“It's having that wee bit of a ripple effect and I think with young males especially you see the impact that sporting people through Ireland have on them when you talk to them in these workshops.

“When you ask them do they know anybody from different counties who have been open about their struggles they usually do because those people are role models that they can identify with.

“That’s why I was so passionate when I was with the county team about being open and honest about my own struggles because you just don't know who that might be helping.

"I speak to loads of people all around the country and they're sitting on the fence whether or not to tell people about this or that, but I think the more people throughout the country that feel safe enough to be open about their struggles the better beacause it's helping so many young people.”

Nugent quickly gets an emotional buy-in from the groups he works with because he’s so open and honest about his own mental health struggles. He sets the tone by being vulnerable himself, which encourages other people to follow suit.

“It's an exchange of energy,” he says. “If I'm giving out that wee bit about me then 99 per cent of the time people will meet you half-way. They're exchanging that sort of vulnerability and I think that's really powerful.

“If you sat in a room with 30 people and they all told your story then it would blow you away. I'm not there talking about me to benefit me, it's to benefit the next person and help them realise everyone has their struggles.

“I don’t really go into my journey of alcohol and drugs and all of that, it's more the feelings behind it.

“Those feelings of being lost and insecure and not being able to show love or to accept love, different things like that. Whenever you get deeper into the feelings behind things, a lot of people are feeling these feelings and they're not really addressing them and sometimes we can float on by without addressing things.

“But if you feel like someone is putting in a lot of work with you then it might spark something in you to have a wee think about where you're at and do a wee bit of work with yourself.

“This programme isn’t like a classroom with me standing there as a teacher and giving out information. It's interactive, holistic, and people centred.”

There’s a much more open conversation about mental health in this country now than there was in the past, but there’s still a journey to travel before it’s fully de-stigmatised.

For a nation of great talkers we’re not always the best communicators when it comes to mental health, and Nugent sees no reason why that should be the case.

“Let's put it this way, if everyone who had a mental health challenge throughout their life put a bandage around their head and had to keep that bandage on forever there wouldn't be too many people without bandages around their head,” he says.

“The more we chat about this the way we chat physical injuries the better. I'm into my third cruciate rehab and I'm wearing a brace so everyone I meet is asking about the cruciate, but they don't know what I've been through mentally because of that cruciate. It's about tapping more into the feelings behind that.

“My friend group now, there's no small talk. People that I meet for coffee in my circle, you get down to it and you talk about your feelings and you talk about what's really going on with your life.

“I think the more conversations we can have about that the better equipped we'll be to deal with anything.

“When you put your head on the pillow at night after having conversations like that you just feel so much better about yourself and so much lighter. Everyone has their struggles and the more we can rant them out to each other the better.

“The tools within the Movemember Get Ahead of the Game programme help with that sort of communication. Both talking and listening too. It's so important to listen without judgement and it means so much to me when someone does listen to me without judgement.

“When I was in Cuan Mhuire there was a quote from Sister Consilo that said, 'God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason, you should listen twice as much as you talk'. That has always stuck with me.

“Listening is so important, especially in these conversations. It's about listening without judgement and it's also about clarifying.

“So, if you're talking to me about stuff you're going through, then me saying that back to you is very powerful. Because you're thinking, 'he is listening to me'. For anyone who is going through a bit of a struggle or not feeling great about themselves, a lot of it boils down to a wee bit of love and validation.

“By me clarifying and listening without judgement it gives you that wee bit of validation. It's the first step in a journey and first step in addressing something that hasn't been addressed before.”

Nugent believes that Gaelic games coaches can have a hugely positive impact on the young players they work with if they see them as a human being first and foremost rather than simply a sportsperson.

He and Saoirse McCarthy will facilitate a Movember ‘Ahead of the Game’ workshop at the Gaelic games Coaching Conference on November 23 where they’ll highlight how both the player and coach themselves can benefit hugely from a people-centred approach.

“It's not all about what happens on Sunday afternoon at a match, it's asking yourself how you can make this person a better person,” says Nugent.

“That's your starting point and from there you build the emotional intelligence and build skills of communication like we're talking about.

“All of these things that we're doing in the foundation of the person is going to help them on Sunday afternoon anyway and it's going to help the team anyway because they're going to become closer if they're open and honest and vulnerable with each other so why not do both.

“Things are getting better in Ireland but there's so much more that we could be doing in terms of creating a safe space for player and realising they show up as people first and foremost.

“If you're a manager of my team and I'm showing up based on what you want me to be then there's 30 people showing up that way as their own individual selves and bringing 30 different personalities. The character within the team, the energy with in the team, the safeness within the team is a lot stronger rather than us just being robots.

“The impact that we can have on young people throughout the country is massive and the ripple effect we can create is huge.

“Even in terms of the words a coach can use. It was Páidí Ó Sé who said a grain of rice can tip the scales and that's very true about words. What we say to people can tip the scales for them. So, it's about learning how we speak to young people properly and how can we give them encouraging words because they'll keep that forever.

“For yourself as well as a coach building your own emotional intelligence is massive. I would advise any club to get involved because every club I've been to they want us back to talk to other teams and do different things.”

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Domhnall Nugent and Saoirse McCarthy will be facilitating a Movember ‘Ahead the Game’ workshop at the Gaelic Games Coaching Conference on November 23. Tickets are available HERE.

GAA clubs interested in participating in the Movember 'Ahead of the Game' mental health literacy program should go HERE.