The It’s a Goal (IAG) project sought to address the problems of male depression and suicide . Following some alarming figures which surfaced in 2003/2004 from the UK Government and the World Health Organisation (WHO), and which stated that 1 in 4 of all suicides involved men between the ages of 16 and 35, IAG determined to find out the reasons for this, and what (if any) facilities, mainstream or otherwise, were in place working with men of this age as a distinct group.

Initially, the aim of the project was to deliver a service that would encourage at-risk young men to confront and deal with their issues and act as an alternative to potentially suicidal behaviour. IAG targeted young men aged 16–35 and attempted to engage them in group-run sessions held in an arena in which they felt comfortable and relaxed enough to address their issues.

These sessions were held in football stadia, for reasons to be explained shortly, and a secondary aim soon became a desire to place the project in as many football grounds up and down the country as possible.

Laureus, a large European-based charitable organisation, runs projects all over the world that encourage social change through sporting activity. A number of these projects are in third-world countries and, at that time, there were no such projects in the United Kingdom. Laureus made an amount of money available to Malcolm MacClean, a social entrepreneur based in the north west of England, to set up a 3-year project and he quickly identified the need for something in the mental health field that addressed the problems of suicide and depression that many young men appeared to be facing with little or no specialist help. Given that football is the number one sport in the country, Macclesfield Town FC were invited to get involved which they were happy to do, and a seminar was organised at the club creating a focus group from interested local professionals. This was a fairly diverse group, consisting of a range of professions, which carried out an extensive feasibility study on whether football could be a factor in helping these young men.

From this group, it became clear that a football ground might be the perfect place for young men to go to do this kind of work. It has been well documented how men in general find it difficult to talk about their emotions at the best of times, and the project set out to create an arena that was both welcoming and relaxing, with a non-clinical (clinical settings being an instant turn off to most men) and non-stigmatising feel (men are often terrified about who may see them at the doctor’s) in a place where men routinely let their emotions out. Whilst it was realised that of course not all young men like football, the curiosity element was relied on to draw in people who may not have accessed mainstream services as well as those who wanted to come to their local football club.

The work of the focus group moved forward and it became clear that the project was going to need a full-time manager. The requirements for the post included having a professional qualification in either psychiatric nursing or social work, being self-motivated, having the ability to work on one’s own, having good local knowledge of both health politics and the demographics of the area, possessing good local contacts within the health and social service fields and having an interest in football. The first author (PS) was appointed to the post, on an initial 18 months secondment basis.

The football club had agreed to allow the project use of part of their stadium for office purposes and project delivery. It was therefore decided to develop a number of sessions that were therapeutically based but used football as a metaphor or an analogy. It was recognised that, every weekend, the stadium would experience extremes of emotion ranging from joy to despair, anger to ecstasy, frustration through to satisfaction, yet none of these were exclusively football emotions. They were human emotions that everyone would have felt at some point in their lives, and it was planned to use this experience to help clients identify with their own feelings and situations.

It was also recognised that, quite often, men are intimidated by the use of ‘clinical language’ and a decision was therefore made, as project manager, to avoid the use of health professional jargon as far as possible, and, to adopt the title of ‘coach’, wearing a Macclesfield Town polo shirt, tracksuit pants and trainers for session delivery. For most of the time the club allowed use of their corporate room, an excellent facility that stretched along the whole of the new stand, and this soon became known as the ‘home ground’. It was decided that sessions would be known as ‘matches’ and that initially there would be six of these (soon extended to 11 as a result of feedback) in what would be known as the ‘season’. The clients themselves were to be termed ‘players’ and the groups they made up would be ‘teams’.

The ‘matches’ used content similar to that used with patients suffering from mild to moderate mental health problems. This ranged from topics such as assertiveness, problem solving, stress-busting and anxiety and anger management to looking at the facts about depression and suicide whilst learning techniques and skills to deal with the symptoms (such as relaxation and posture). Emphasis was placed on the use of football analogies, particularly those relating to Macclesfield Town, as it was felt that ‘players’ would identify better with issues that were happening locally.

A major problem in the early days was getting the message out, particularly to people who might well be isolated, but also to potential referrers. With that in mind, Malcolm MacClean organised a project launch at the club and Laureus sent along three of its more high-profile ambassadors to help bring the crowds in: Sir Ian Botham, Sir Bobby Charlton and Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson. This resulted in an excellent turnout as well as good media coverage, ensuring that people knew what the project was about and the type of referral that was being looked for.

Despite the high-profile launch, however, reaching and engaging directly with the target group of men proved difficult at the beginning, particularly in the case of those men who lived in their bedrooms, had little social contact or contact with services and were clearly prime candidates for harming themselves. Posters and leaflets were designed, using a striking image of an ordinary man in everyday clothes celebrating like modern footballers are often seen doing, by running with his jersey over his head, and these began to appear all over town, including fast-food shops, laundries, bus and train waiting rooms and pub toilets. In addition, talks were given at doctors’ surgeries, social service departments, community psychiatric nurse meetings, probation services and the like, promoting IAG. It was this promotion of the project to local professionals that resulted in initial referrals.