Q&A: Rich Wilkinson, Support After Sport Co-founder

In recent years, the provision of aftercare for deselected football academy players has received increased attention, with clubs like Crystal Palace introducing schemes designed to keep ex-academy players in the game and offer help in building careers outside football.

However, emotional support for these young players is still lacking, and Rich Wilkinson, founder of the not-for-profit organisation Support After Sport, is committed to doing something about that.

After being deselected by Stoke City when he was on the cusp of securing a YTS contract 25 years ago, Wilkinson struggled to cope with the rejection. He left football entirely and eventually became a counsellor, before publishing several influential papers focused on the mental health of deselected football players.

In 2024, he co-founded Support After Sport and put together a team of experts dedicated to boosting aftercare in the game and providing improved emotional and mental health support to footballers and athletes, through mentorship and counselling sessions. We caught up with Rich to find out more about his organisation and the broader development of aftercare in football.

How were you impacted by being deselected by Stoke City as a young player?

"I had two or three years at Stoke as a teenager, and coaches were telling me it was going to happen, they were putting me with the YTS players, I was going to France with the YTS team… everyone was like 'This is it now, you'll get offered your two-year YTS contract', and I believed it.

They sent the letters out, and mine came through. I thought they would be offering me the YTS, and instead it was them releasing me. It affected me big time, I couldn't manage the emotions, not at 17 years old.

So, I decided to shut them off and push them away. Football had been a big part of my life for years, but I just removed it, that was my way of coping. I didn't have any support from the club, so I pushed it away, so far that it was only when I went into my counselling training in 2018, 2019, then did a degree in 2019 and went into personal therapy, that it all came back up.

Something was underneath the surface, bubbling, and every time I got close to it in practice sessions, I'd be like 'Can we stop a minute? I told the tutor that I used to play football, but it didn't work out, and they were like 'I think you need to go into your personal therapy now, and a couple of sessions in, it all started to come out."

How did you build on that initial breakthrough? 

"I wrote my literature review to finish that degree, focusing on mental health surrounding deselected academy players, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. For a decade, no substantial research had been done, other than one piece in 2015 — it was a real shock.

I had to keep taking my personal therapy to help get me to the next bit of the literature review, that's how traumatic it was! But I completed it, it got a First, and then it got published, and two other articles on the subject.

I qualified as a counsellor and worked for [Tony Adams' organisation] Sporting Chance, because I thought that would be my best chance of getting in front of football players who had been released or were struggling.

That worked quite well for a bit, but I was noticing that support for under-16s wasn’t covered, it felt like provision wasn’t in place for those who’d experienced what I did.

Then in 2020, a filmmaker from London [Ben Marlow] contacted me to take part in a documentary on football academies, and he'd read my piece of research and wanted me to be in a segment of the film): that was called 'Sidelined'.

As soon as the documentary was over — and it won a couple of awards — we lost that thread, so again we parked it, got back on with my counselling. Then, I got a call from Rob Dorsett from Sky Sports saying he had read my published article, was creating a further documentary about the academy system and asked if I could take part and from there I got involved with the documentary, contacting a client and doing a case study for it."

That conversation, with former Wigan player Shaun Fallon, was very eye-opening.

"Shaun and I worked closely during his time as my client to process his unresolved emotional issues. It felt natural to approach Shaun to get involved with the Sky Documentary to discuss his feedback and our experience working together on camera.

Prior to working with Shaun on the Sky Documentary I contacted the BACP and Shaun to ensure participation would be ethical. During this time, we both felt that our desire to help people aligned, we agreed that after the Sky documentary we would make this a reality and Support After Sport was formed.

Ben Marlow, who filmed Sidelined, also came on as a director so that we could set up the not-for-profit. Shaun and Ben took me to a level that I couldn't reach myself, which is creating a not-for-profit, and since then we've built a brilliant team of around 15: nine counsellors, two award-winning filmmakers in Ben Marlow and Jack Tomkins and other suitably qualified individuals.

We're always raising awareness around player well-being and are diligently focused on helping those young, deselected players and their families access the appropriate support."

Since founding Support After Sport, what steps have you taken to help deselected players?

"When I started Support After Sport, my biggest fear was failing others. We built it very slowly from the ground up to make sure we had support systems in place before we took on clients.

We spoke to our counsellors, explained our approach, advertised in Therapy Today, and were inundated with counsellors wanting to offer their services. We now have a number of them on board, and they all have different qualities, some of them have lived experiences as football players that didn't make it.

Previously, I went into a football club to counsel, but it didn't work at all because the players didn't share everything with me because they were so concerned about losing their place in the team. Even though I'd say, 'I'm an outsider, I'm not part of the football club, everything's confidential in this space', they still wouldn't do it.

So, I didn't want to try that again. The thing I knew worked was having phone calls with parents who would say, 'My child's in a really bad place, he's in his room, he's depressed, he's suicidal, can you speak to him (but don't mention it's counselling because I know he won't engage)? So, I'd have a call with that player, and they'd tell me about their experiences.

They were engaging because they knew that I'd been through the same feelings of failure and rejection. I'd do two or three calls and then offer them counselling, and some would do 10 or 15 counselling sessions, while others would genuinely feel a lot better because of those initial calls.

So, when we set up Support After Sport, we set up mentorship calls, with all the parents offering three mentorship calls. The first would be a check-in about who we are, our lived experience, and their story, the second is a more in-depth call about their journey, feelings, emotions, and where they go next. Do they go back into football?

Do they focus on that identity that the academy has created for them to try and be the best version of themself two or three tiers down, or do they want to do something completely different?

And the third call, often they'll say they don't want to be in football anymore, they might want to transition out of the game so we'll refer them to organisations such as LAPS, Life After Professional Sport, and therapeutically, if we think that there are still some emotions to process, we might suggest another batch of calls.

It's about us working out where they're at."

What is missing from the aftercare packages currently being operated by top-tier clubs?

"The bit that's always been missing for me is the emotional support. After being deselected, a player might find a new club three or four tiers down, but he's still not dealt with that rejection from the academy that released them.

He wanted to be a player for them, but all of a sudden he's having to adjust that he's not that anymore. The clubs might say they've done their aftercare; they've got him a contract two or three tiers down, and that's amazing, but have they given them the emotional support, have they put them in front of someone trained enough to assess how they feel about that.

Usually, the answer to that is No and that's where we're trying to step in. Some academies are offering aftercare, it's fantastic, but it's not just about aftercare, it's about emotional support straight away when they're released.

Research shows that after a player is released, they could experience psychological distress for the first 21 days, this is where we put our mentorship calls in — the research states that's when they're under the most stress, that's when the most impact and support is needed."

Academy players tend to develop an athletic identity that makes it difficult to adjust to a life outside professional football. How do you go about deconstructing that identity?

"Sometimes I'll go back to how the identity was created; research has shown that it comes from your friends, your parents, your coaches, and the environment that you're in. You might be 10 years old and you're a better player than your mates, everyone's noticing you've got potential, and you create this identity that 'I am better than them'.

You get picked up by an academy and get greater respect, at school you're known as the footballer, and it's this wave of confidence. Your identity becomes 'I need to be so devoted to this, you don't think of anything else, schoolwork becomes irrelevant, some friendships become irrelevant because you stick with the ones that keep fuelling your identity.

One of the biggest things that shocked me when I started doing my research is that in most academies, there will be one or two players they know will be their elite players that they can sell, and the others are never going to be that.

They're always going to be deselected. When you're deselected, the fuel for your athletic identity is gone, you've never felt rejection before, and it's too much to take.

We spoke to a couple of football clubs early on, and we positioned it as 'We are the support system after deselection, we'll come in and talk to the parents about their sons and daughters not making it, and we'll be there for them if they don't make it'.

That was the first time anyone had approached the club in that way, and it was prickly!"

Which clubs are you working with today?

"We're working with a few academies to integrate our workshops and support systems into their programs, so together we can educate the parents on emotionally accessing their children, giving them the tools to deal with the emotional side of it.

We also want to do a wrap-around for the player, the parents, and the family, so that when a player is deselected, they fall straight into our services. We offer mentorship calls for the player, but we also look after the family, and we've got parents in our organisation with lived experiences who can talk to other parents about what went on with their son."

How can clubs show academy players that there is a life outside of football without diminishing their competitive edge?

"It's impossible for them to sit down and say to their players, 'You actually might not make it'. How do they say that to them? How do they position that in a way that they'll listen to?

I never want to challenge football clubs, I want to work with them, and the healthiest way to do that is to suggest what might work, evolve and improve it and always be working towards positive mental well-being and resilience outcomes for players and their families.

The clubs are listening, the LFE [League Football Education] is listening, people are asking for proposals from us. But can a coach or an academy ever say to their players, 'In the next two months, you're out'? Are the players going to want to be a part of that club anymore?"

Moving forward, what are your goals for Support After Sport?

"Our growth is organic because there are inherent challenges: I operate a private practice counselling case load; Ben's an extremely busy filmmaker so we put in as many hours as we can. The initial plan was to obtain funding, but like anything in football, there are many worthy causes such as ours vying for funding.

We've submitted proposals for academies, and for corporate entities. The next 3-6 months we are looking for some of those proposals to commence, securing three or four football clubs to become part of their transition outlet, employing somebody in marketing, somebody who understands fundraising and grant applications.

Our focus is to pick as many deselected players up as we can: through social media, flyers, talking at schools, word of mouth. We're already talking to football academies and people who are in decision making positions in football, and in addition to deselected football players, we're trying to create a system that will support any sport, injured football players, injured tennis players, injured athletes, retired athletes or players who are still in the game struggling with confidence or motivation.

We're trying to create something unique."

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