Ronan McNamee emerges from the darkness to help make a difference

The extent of Ronan McNamee’s commitment to being an ambassador for Pieta House is that the role hasn’t always come easily to him. He spoke to media on Thursday about the suicide prevention charity’s Darkness into Light fundraiser, a walk into the sunrise in 200 locations, supported by Electric Ireland and which takes place on Saturday, May 6th.

The Tyrone full back recounted how Antrim hurler Domhnall Nugent asked him to address a recent event in the ‘Let’s Face It’ campaign, which promotes mental health.

“Speaking at that is uncomfortable and your emotions are hanging on a knife edge all the time, but the more I feel I can speak about it, then the easier it will get and you just might be able to get more comfortable with it.”

His major revelation that he had attempted suicide erupted out of an arresting 2019 interview with Cahair O’Kane in the Irish News, which was meant to be about his first All Star.

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Putting his experiences out for public scrutiny is largely about trying to help people in a similar situation, even if he finds the interactions occasionally difficult.

“It’s probably something I could be better at, maybe addressing it more. I would tend to sit on a lot of my own stuff still. But I have found since speaking about it that people are maybe more inclined to ask you and come up to speak to you if they’ve dealt with any underlying issues themselves over the years.

“If there’s something you can take from each other then you will. It’s probably something that I haven’t really addressed as well as I should have. But I’m probably getting better at that now.”

Even if his acute problems are thankfully in the past, McNamee understands that he still has to tread carefully.

“Whenever you do speak about it, it reignites a lot of the emotions that you would have felt previously. It’s not a case of it disappears and goes away and you realise that, the older you get.”

A decorated footballer: All-Ireland winner with Tyrone and an All Star, he says that football has helped with his equilibrium.

“Massively. It gives you a structure.”

Currently counting the days until the season can resume for him after the unexpected defeat by Monaghan in Omagh a couple of weeks ago, he says that unlike Mayo, who took time off after their championship defeat by Roscommon, Tyrone went straight back training.

Comparing the new round-robin All-Ireland format to the prototype ‘Super 8s’ of 2018 and ‘19 – which went well for Tyrone, who reached an All-Ireland final and semi-final – he looks forward to re-engaging.

Pointing out that championship matches between Tyrone and Monaghan are nearly always extraordinarily tight (of the last seven meetings, only one was decided by more than a score) and that it was possible to take positives as well as the sickening negative of being beaten by an injury-time goal.

“That’s all you’ll think of for the following few days but if you lost by a couple of points and hadn’t performed well, you’d be more annoyed and wondering what way to go at it. There were areas we were really good in during the game and a lot where we need to improve and it’s just finding the balance.

“There’s always going to be a purple patch and ultimately we didn’t deal with that as well as we could have.”

Having missed most of the league with injury, McNamee is back on board with the team and looking forward to the round robins, which start in three weeks’ time.

Tuesday will reveal the draw for the group stages and the following Saturday, he will participate in Darkness into Light. It will be a fundraiser and also offers help along the way. This year the Tyrone walk takes place in Castlederg and he will be taking part with his girlfriend Clara, a mental health professional.

“She actually has a practice there and she is involved as well. The plan is to have her available that morning and if anybody talks or has issues they want to speak to her about they can. It is something that is rewarding and nice to be involved in.”