How former Middlesbrough and Sheffield Wednesday No 1 is helping to walk away from life’s mental pressures

FOR those who go on their daily walk today, the sight of the open country and the landscape of this Sceptred Isle may bring comfort during troubled times.
Mark Crossley: Has formed the charity WATCH.Mark Crossley: Has formed the charity WATCH.
Mark Crossley: Has formed the charity WATCH.

For Mark Crossley, it has provided a particular sanctuary and enabled him to cope with all that he had known in his working life being taken away after 33 years – compounded by a challenging time in his personal life.

It was in January that the things changed for the Yorkshireman, a cult hero during his long association with Nottingham Forest and someone who also donned the goalkeeping gloves for Middlesbrough and, briefly, Sheffield Wednesday.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The new year began with Barnsley-born Crossley leaving his coaching role at Chesterfield after John Sheridan was sacked on January 2. Later on that month, Crossley’s father, Geoff, was told he had bladder cancer.

Action man: 
Sheffield Wednesday goalkeeper Mark Crossley punches clear.Action man: 
Sheffield Wednesday goalkeeper Mark Crossley punches clear.
Action man: Sheffield Wednesday goalkeeper Mark Crossley punches clear.

The world for Crossley – out of work for the first time – was turned upside down and he readily admits he was struggling to cope from a mental perspective.

His escape was found in the South Yorkshire countryside.

Dressing room banter can be merciless. Crossley should know after being at the heart of it for most of life in football.

Back in the day, if he had said that going out for a stroll had aided his mental well-being, he would have got some quizzical looks and a fair amount of mickey-taking. Times have changed.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Crossley’s walks are inspiring not just himself, but others. Alongside several former team-mates, including Chris Kirkland, Nigel Jemson and Dean Windass, he has formed the WATCH (Walking And Talking Charity Hikes), charity aiming to support people suffering from mental health issues and raise funds.

Crossley told The Yorkshire Post: “Football is different and very regimented in terms of what time you have got to be there, why you have got to be and what time you have got to eat and what you eat and what hotel you’re going to.

“You are staying over on Friday night and coming back on Saturday. Thirty-three years of it trains the brain to be like that.

“I compare it to the army. Even though I have never been in the army, I can imagine it being very regimented. Football can be like that. When you are in it, your world revolves around it.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“I started to struggle mentally and got a little bit lost (after leaving Chesterfield). My mate then said: ‘Listen, I only work part-time, come out with me and have a nice long walk.’

“I said: ‘Walk? You must be mad, I have got a car on the drive.’ But I went and absolutely loved it.

“Then I went on my own and I love music and it was an ideal opportunity to have that couple of hours release to get my ear phones in. Then, I started tweeting a few videos as I like a bit of banter whether it is negative or positive.

“I fell on it, basically. But I fell on something special to me.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“With my tweets, it tends to be people with mental health that it has been helping and inspiring. It has helped me that it has helped other people. It is like the satisfaction after a game when you win and when someone says ‘well done’.

“Some people think: ‘How can you suffer from depression, you have got everything in life that you want.’ But it is not like that.”

Should he have still been around, Crossley’s mentor in football and in life, the late, great Brian Clough would have been given his former goalkeeper one of his trademark thumbs-up.

Although it would probably have been between rollickings for Crossley, who Clough gave four nicknames to: ‘Barnsley’, ‘Imbecile’, ‘Jigsaw’ and ‘S**thouse.’

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Over 15 years on from Clough’s passing, the game’s greatest master of psychology remains a huge figure in Crossley’s life.

He acknowledged: “I still miss him. I have got memorabilia in the house of him and a big canvas painting of him above the bed still. I looked up to him.

“I have got a beard at the moment and I think to myself now that if he was here and he sees it, then there would be no way I would be having this beard on. He would be saying: ‘Go and get a shave, you dirty b*gger.’

“If he saw you at training and you looked scruffy, he’d just send you home

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“It certainly made you think. If you didn’t shake your hands properly with him, he wouldn’t like it and would punch you in the stomach and say: ‘Shake your bloody hands properly.’ He treated everybody the same.

“He was such a powerful person. I was telling my wife on Mother’s Day that we were once playing at Spurs and we used to pick him up at a place on the way on the Friday as we stayed down.

“On this day, he was in a woman’s garden and she had some lovely rose trees and he was breaking all the roses off. He walked over to the letter box and posted a load of money through -–presumably to pay for the roses.

“Then he came on the bus and gave all the players and staff a red rose each and said: ‘Tell your wives and your girlfriends – and some of you, your boyfriends – thank you for letting me have you on Mothering Sunday weekend.’

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“And we were thinking: ‘What are we going to do with this rose all weekend?’ when we were on the way down to Tottenham.”

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

Almost certainly you are here because you value the quality and the integrity of the journalism produced by The Yorkshire Post’s journalists - almost all of which live alongside you in Yorkshire, spending the wages they earn with Yorkshire businesses - who last year took this title to the industry watchdog’s Most Trusted Newspaper in Britain accolade.

And that is why I must make an urgent request of you: as advertising revenue declines, your support becomes evermore crucial to the maintenance of the journalistic standards expected of The Yorkshire Post. If you can, safely, please buy a paper or take up a subscription. We want to continue to make you proud of Yorkshire’s National Newspaper but we are going to need your help.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Postal subscription copies can be ordered by calling 0330 4030066 or by emailing [email protected]. Vouchers, to be exchanged at retail sales outlets - our newsagents need you, too - can be subscribed to by contacting subscriptions on 0330 1235950 or by visiting www.localsubsplus.co.uk where you should select The Yorkshire Post from the list of titles available.

If you want to help right now, download our tablet app from the App / Play Stores. Every contribution you make helps to provide this county with the best regional journalism in the country.

Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson

Editor

Comment Guidelines

National World encourages reader discussion on our stories. User feedback, insights and back-and-forth exchanges add a rich layer of context to reporting. Please review our Community Guidelines before commenting.