Rugby presenter Craig Doyle has opened up about the tragedies he has faced and his challenging journey of working through grief. Doyle, who hosts ITV's This Morning as well as TNT Sports' rugby coverage, has revealed how a series of deaths close to him took him to "some very dark places".
Dark Places During the Pandemic
The Irish presenter revealed how a number of premature deaths through his life affected his mental health during the Covid-19 pandemic. Having 'key-worker' status to present matches, he found himself regularly sleeping in his car at motorway service stations.
"I remember sitting there thinking 'F***'s sake, what can I do?' Sometimes there would be a s****y hotel to stay in for a couple of nights," he told the Telegraph. "But sometimes I would just drive to the next place and stop halfway and sleep in the car. I kept a sleeping bag and a cooler box with food in it so I wouldn't have to go somewhere."
With his father, Sean, having recently passed away from vascular dementia, Doyle admitted that he spent a lot of time on his own grieving, taking him to some "very dark places". He added that it scared him, as he could feel himself spiralling. While he never thought of taking his own life, he admits his wife "would say I was depressed at the time".
Addressing a Series of Tragedies
It led him to see a counsellor over the death of his father, which resulted in him addressing a number of tragedies in his life. The first of those was the suicide of a former classmate at Blackrock College, marking Doyle's first experience with sudden tragedy. Then, when filming the BBC's Holiday programme in Ibiza, an 18-year-old motorcyclist died directly in front of him following a collision with their minibus. Doyle was then shaken when a cameraman who he worked with on the Holiday programme took his own life a few years later.
He said: "The counsellor asked: 'OK, so what have you done about this?' And I said: 'Nothing. I just cracked on. Does everyone not have lives like this?' And she said: 'Look, none of this is normal stuff. They actually don't.' I think we expect a lot of ourselves sometimes in terms of coping."
Doyle has since suffered further tragedy, with a close family member taking his life two years ago, leaving Doyle once again struggling to cope. His struggles with mental health led him to become involved with a rugby charity called the LooseHeadz Foundation.
A Message of Action
"I loved the simplicity of it and the connectivity," said Doyle, who is now a trustee. "The theory is, if every rugby club has a social secretary and a fixture secretary and a physio, well, they should have someone there for the mental health as well. Lives have been saved. What they've told us is that when you just have that first chat, the relief and the release from it is unbelievable. They get things moving. That's the message. Do something about it."
