Dan Cole: The 28NotOut mental health panel

This weekend’s episode of SportSpiel with England Rugby’s Dan Cole is a little bit different – but arguably one of our most important shows.

On July 10 we hosted a live panel organised by our wonderful charity partners The Mintridge Foundation as part of their 28NotOut campaign – all about Mental Health and sport.

The event was held to raise money for the Max Hunter fund, and Max was a hugely important person to a lot of people.

Tragically last year he died by suicide at the age of just 28.

So that was one of the aims of this live panel – to normalise the conversations around mental health and the benefit of sport. Helping us do that were four amazing panellists.

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First up we had England and Leicester Tigers star Dan Cole who told us about some of his own experiences as well as plenty of rugby conversation along the way – from the highs of the 2019 World Cup to the lows of the 2015 tournament and battles with injury.

As well as Dan we were also joined by psychotherapist Gemma Saggers, Liam Durkin from the Papyrus charity who focus on the prevention of young suicide and also Dan Griffin from Stamford Rugby club who was a close friend of Max.

There’s a lot to learn from this live panel and we hope you enjoy the evening as much as we did.

Listen to the podcast episode below

You can also watch the live panel on The Mintridge Foundation’s YouTube channel here.