Wigan St Patricks Forges Partnership with the Willow Project

With mental health awareness headlining across all parts of society, Wigan St Patricks are looking to become a leading force in the sport of Rugby League in terms of providing information on mental health wellbeing and awareness to players, parent, coaches, supporters and volunteers.

Having suffered the tragic loss of players and supoprters as a result of mental health issues, we as a club feel that we need to do as much as we can to break down the barriers around mental health and the stigma attached to asking for help. This sport is by the large a male dominated environment and as such we feel it’s vitally important to get the message out there that it’s ok to talk about your feelings and it’s ok to ask for help.

We have since partnered up with the Willow Project who are a free of charge counselling service for young people in the brorough, we aim to use their vast experise in the field of mental health to develop workshops that will be delivered at the club to players, parents, coaches and volunteers and will cover the subject of not only mental health but nutrition, cyber bullying, confusion about sexuality and much more, we aim to provide all users of our club with access to information on wellbeing in generally.

Delivering these courses in the rugby environment will hopefully encourage people to feel comfortable enough to ask for help should they need it and be safe in the knowledge that help is available form various outlets and we hope to work with the leagues to make the courses available at all amateur clubs in the region.

Click here to find out more about the Willow Project