Annan Athletic's Jon Connolly: The phone call that saved my life

“I’d walked to the shop and bought the vodka. I knew where pills were. I’d done a bit of Google searching, looking into it. That night I was ready to go.”

Connolly is here to talk about the reason he did not go: a phonecall to the Back Onside charity in his moment of desperation. Had the charity’s founder, Libby Emmerson, not picked up, he is “one million per cent” certain he would not have survived the evening.

This was in 2019, since when Connolly has been gradually working his way further away from that harrowing brink. The coach recently recorded a short video for Back Onside, underlining the raw facts of his experience. He believes the mental health charity deserves more support, more funding, more exposure. He is also adamant that, if it did not exist, many more people would be dead – people he knows.

“I did the video in one take, sent it to Libby and said, ‘I hope this is ok, because I don’t think I could do it again’,” he says. “Then I started crying.

“It was like a release. Certain things in it…I’d never properly said before. I showed my daughter, who’s nearly 16, before it came out, and the first thing she wrote back to me was, ‘So proud of you’. That set me off again.”

Jon’s Story 📹

“I was at a very dark stage in my life & a very scary stage. I was scared, vulnerable & didn’t feel that I had a purpose in this world.”

All of Jons support was funded by people like 𝘆𝗼𝘂.

Please help us to continue this by donating today via our website 💛 pic.twitter.com/M3XGiWJUHM

— Back Onside (@BackOnside) January 17, 2023

These were highly-charged outpourings from Connolly, who has been receiving counselling, through the charity, to help him piece together why he suffered such a distressing darkness. Immediately after the night he almost killed himself, he also spent days in a mental health ward – something he was “embarrassed” to consider at the time, but is now content to share.

Connolly describes, in gregarious detail, the way his emotions piled up. “I didn’t actually know I had depression at the time,” he says. “I’d broken up with my youngest daughter’s mum, and went into a proper dark place. Just before the break-up I’d also lost my brother to cancer.

“Looking back, I had all the classic symptoms. I was coming home from work, not speaking to the missus or daughter, going into my room, head in the phone. I wasn’t socialising, which isn’t me – I’m normally lively and bubbly.

“When you’re like that, you just want to shut off. Everything goes numb around you. She [my partner] couldn’t take it any more, and I totally understand that. I was a ghost of myself.

Connolly has opened up about his experience of depression, having been helped by the Back Onside charity (Image: Jon Colman)

“So I’d lost my brother, my relationship, and I took time out of football because my head had gone. I was sitting there that night in my living room, on my own, and I was like, ‘I’ve had enough’. I’d been sitting up, not sleeping, thinking about it night after night, and it was, ‘What’s the point?’”

Connolly calmly says he had entertained two “visions” of ending his life. One involved a bridge near his house which straddles the M8 motorway. “But I took that out of the equation because I didn’t want to hurt someone else that was innocent. Then I thought, ‘Am I weak, because I’m thinking of the consequences?’

“That’s how my mind was. You are just in that wee tunnel. Then it was pills and vodka…”

He had prepared for such a “painless” ending but, even as the idea engulfed him, was aware of Back Onside, which had already done crucial and helpful work in football. “I went onto their Twitter page, found a number, got in contact and Libby answered.”

Connolly says he did so without total conviction. “This will sound weird, but it’s like an out of body thing. And you had the devil on one shoulder saying, ‘Let’s just get this done’ and the angel nipping away, saying ‘Phone Libby...’

“It was make or break. If she answered the phone, I decided I would give her an opportunity [to help]. If she didn’t, that would be my final confirmation. She could have been at someone else’s house, on the phone to someone different. Thankfully she wasn’t. If she hadn’t answered that phone, I wouldn’t be here.”

Connolly says Emmerson was at his house in Bargeddie, near Coatbridge, quicker than he imagined possible. She took him to the nearest A&E unit at Wishaw, and he was quickly referred to a mental health unit at Stobhill.

“I was in an absolute daze. I went into this room, six beds, three either side, must have been 1-2am,” he says. “There was this guy talking to himself, another guy shaking his pillow…it was scary, I’m not gonna lie. I went, ‘I’m not sleeping here, get me home’ but was told if I’d left the premises they’d have phoned the police.”

Connolly says he remains a 'work in progress' but wants to help others after coming through his struggles (Image: Joe Saunders)

Connolly says he found a corner of a games room in the unit and curled up, but did not sleep. He refused medication – “I’m not getting sedation, *** off” – and felt his feelings spiral further when the assessment that could enable him to go home took time to come. He had called his sister’s partner, and then Libby, to help him in this regard, and struggled to stay calm over another night.

“There was this guy next to me, and I asked him how long he’d been here. ‘Two years,’ he says. That hit me. I was like, ‘I need to get out of here…’”

He was allowed out the next day when his sister’s partner assured medical staff he would stay with him, at his home, for a period. Connolly now believes his time in the ward was, in effect, a form of “shock treatment” which brought home his fragility – and need for help.

“I had to go and check in with my doctor every day, see a psychiatrist for a few weeks, and then Libby set up the counselling. Getting to that stage was a long process,” he says.

The Covid-19 lockdown of 2020 was, says Connolly, a blessing, because it removed the need for him to leave the house, face people and confront his “embarrassment”. It was not long before he applied successfully for the Annan coaching job, but in the meantime he took part in counselling sessions on Zoom, which steadily lit some stark yet revealing memories.

He lays them all out now. “I’ve broken it down to losing my dad when I was six. He died in front of me – collapsed with a brain tumour. That’s the only memory I have of him. I can see that moment clear as day, followed by the sight of my mum crying on the couch.

“I had to grow up very quickly. I was an angry kid. I used to get bullied for not having a dad. You had to fight your way out of it.”

Connolly says Back Onside, the mental health charity set up by Libby Emmerson, deserves more exposure and support (Image: Back Onside)

Connolly, who now lives in the same house, has reflected that the lack of a father figure meant he was drawn to socialising, and playing football, with older boys in his housing scheme. As the bairn of the group, he was urged to go in goal… “and I loved it”.

School was challenging, since Connolly says he was suspended 36 times and expelled for his fourth year “because of constantly fighting…sticking up for people who were being bullied”. Emotions were also pent up inside him because he had not been allowed to attend his father’s funeral, his family seeking to protect the six-year old.

Along the way he displayed a high aptitude for goalkeeping. He was bigger than many of his peers and, after impressing as a schoolboy at Paul Sturrock’s St Johnstone, was scouted by George Burley’s Ipswich Town.

He was a Scotland youth international yet struggled to fit in home visits between Ipswich and trips to attend Scotland training camps in Largs. After one such journey, he went home and lied to his mum that he had been given extra time off. During that spell he trained with his local club, Albion Rovers and, at 17, was seduced by an offer of first-team football back home.

“At Ipswich I had Richard Wright and Craig Forrest ahead of me, and I’m thinking I should be ahead of them,” he laughs. After Albion, he dropped into non-league, before being picked up by Motherwell, where the great Andy Goram was the main goalkeeper.

Connolly says he worked harder than he ever had during his time at Fir Park, where he made two first-team appearances, but his career then became nomadic, Connolly totting up a large number of clubs at different Scottish levels including Dumbarton and East Stirlingshire.

He eventually progressed to management with Fauldhouse United in 2017 but it was during this spell that his feelings gradually got on top of him.

“My brother died, and I had to arrange the funeral,” he says. “He had cancer and told me everything he wanted. Organising it was my sole focus, and I never grieved.

Connolly with Annan's teenage goalkeeper Ethan Mitchell, left (Image: Joe Saunders)

“Things just built up in me. I went to Bangkok with Scotland’s over-35s to play in the World Cup, and I remember phoning my missus. I was in my hotel room while the other boys were out for a big dinner. That was the beginning of secluding myself.

“Then we had a family holiday to Cyprus, and during the day, while the missus and wee one were by the pool, I’d be up in the room on the phone, trying to do transfers and stuff. ‘Take a day off,’ she said, but I wouldn’t. That was the final straw for her. That was breaking her down. I didn’t realise I was doing it.”

When he and his partner split, Connolly says “everything felt as it was crumbling at the same time,” leading to the night he needed a phonecall to save his life. He says he is in a much better place today, and though the counselling from Back Onside often leaves him in tears, he says he feels “lighter” for the experience – and more understanding of himself.

He is also growing through work at Annan. He says intense self-doubt made it hard even to apply for the goalkeeping coach role at Galabank, but time in the position has helped him grow. He talks enthusiastically about the way Greg Fleming, Annan’s experienced number one, and their teenage former Celtic keeper Ethan Mitchell, have given him grateful feedback – something which, given his history of “self-hate”, he is learning to accept.

He also works with goalkeepers from a higher level on a private basis, and his ambition is to work full-time as a keeper coach – a vocation to which he says he can bring a rich menu of experiences, both from his itinerant playing days and his volatile emotional challenges.

On the day of our conversation, Connolly is preparing for his final UEFA B Licence assessment. “I’ve been overthinking it for weeks,” he says. “But as soon as I step on the pitch, I’ll get into my wee zone. Academically, I never achieved anything. Apart from my driving test, this will be the first thing. If I get it I’ll be like, ‘Wow – I’m proud of myself’. That’s a big thing for me.”

Connolly says Annan manager Peter Murphy has been supportive and understanding

Connolly says Peter Murphy, Annan’s manager, has been “different class” in understanding his background and feelings. “There are times I need to walk away from a situation, and he knows that. The first time I explained it to him, he said he was glad I’d done that. There are times he’ll come to me and say I don’t look 100 per cent, too, and I haven’t noticed it myself. He’s good at picking up wee things.”

Connolly describes himself as a “work in progress” but says he has developed tools to cope. He used to get sucked into disputes on social media, he says, then hating himself for letting it consume hours and deprive him of sleep. “Now, instead of reacting, I’ll put the phone down, go off and do something else – tidy up, or whatever,” he says.

“When I look back at my old Twitter, I was putting out cries for help without realising it,” he adds. “Screenshotting quotes, arguing with people for no reason. I’ve deleted my old Twitter, and on my new one I just post about my football stuff now. But if I see something someone has posted, that seems out of character, I’ll message them privately and ask if they’re ok.

“I don’t push mental health on people either, because that can push the person away. It’s finding the fine line.”

Connolly says the work he has done in the last four years has enabled him finally to grieve for his father and brother. He had an honest conversation with his mum about not being allowed to his dad’s funeral, which he says also lightened a load of many years.

He has also, in stages, learned about the “hidden disease” of depression. Football is more enlightened about the condition today but Connolly believes many dressing rooms are still not equipped to understand it fully.

Hence his wish to support Back Onside. The charity has helped others at Annan, as well as family members of players and staff. Connolly says the video he recorded for them was a form of ‘closure’ for him – yet it opened doors for others.

“When the video went out,” he adds, “I first had two people approach me, saying, ‘Great video big man, so brave of you’. But then people started coming forward asking how they would go about getting help themselves. That blew me away.

“Some of them are people I wouldn’t expect. But that’s the thing with this – you don’t know what people are going through. Everybody thinks it’s the quiet one in the corner, and it could be. But it could also be the one being the main man, jack the lad, joking and laughing, like I would.

Connolly is taking UEFA qualifications and hopes to progress to full-time coaching (Image: Jon Colman)

“It’s not a choice. It’s an illness. I see the crap footballers get – perfect example is Jesse Lingard. I watched his documentary the other week. People only see him on social media, clowning about. They don’t know what he’s been through in his past life, having to bring up his wee brother and sister, with his mum being put into rehab.

“I hope a lot of football fans watch it. It will maybe change their perception, when they’re hammering someone for being rubbish. Don’t just say that – don’t give him abuse online. Maybe he’s struggling with confidence, maybe something’s going on in the background.”

Connolly’s own background makes him fervent in his belief that charities like Back Onside deserve more. “I hate all politics, I’m not one way or another, but things like this should be government-funded. Instead of them paying their pals to make fake stuff with fake companies for millions of pounds, here are real heroes, doing real stuff, saving people.”

His eyes are fixed on mine as he delivers the bottom line, at the end of 90 minutes of stark yet uplifting conversation. “I know for a fact they save lives,” he says. “Mine’s just one of them.”

For more information about Back Onside, visit backonside.co.uk or contact the charity on 07528243100. The Samaritans can also be contacted on 116 123.