A touching celebration of seven years of LooseHeadz
Rugby mental health charity LooseHeadz celebrated their seventh anniversary with a touch tournament.
Leading rugby mental health charity, LooseHeadz, recently reached their seventh anniversary and marked the milestone by hosting a touch rugby tournament for local teams at Wilmslow RFC, where it all began.
Eighteen local rugby clubs and businesses joined the celebrations as LooseHeadz hit their seventh season. What was initially a small project between friends, has now become a global mission.
Founded in 2017, the charity provides rugby clubs with tailored mental health support including online training, a wellbeing check-in platform, a 24/7 text line and more, to raise awareness and encourage more conversation around mental health.
No fewer than 1,192 rugby clubs in 28 different countries now have a designated mental health leads thanks to LooseHeadz.
Co-founder Dave Nicoll, who set up the charity with Mark and Rob Shotton said they wanted to do more than just buy a pint for their friends who were struggling mentally, and so LooseHeadz was born.
“It was very much a case of setting out to help a few mates at Wilmslow RFC, our local club. We knew it was important to help but never imagined it would end up being a global mission working with almost 1,200 rugby clubs around the world. So it’s been quite a journey.
“The mental health training has been key. We’ve had about 1,500 people using our free online mental health training that we created with the Mental Health Foundation. Increasingly taking off is our TalkHeadz initiative, working with our partner charity Talk Club.”
TalkHeadz is primarily based on touch rugby but can be applied to any form of rugby. Players check in and check out of a session answering the question ‘How are you out of 10?’ This sees them considering how they are feeling and able to disclose more if they want.
“A lot of clubs are really taking TalkHeadz on board and using it at training sessions.”
LooseHeadz has also launched a youth mental health training module, which has had support from former England star, Shaunagh Brown. Developed by mental health experts and delivered by rugby pros, it’s tailored for ages 10-18, and is great for coaches and parents too.
Having partnered with The Mental Health Foundation, LooseHeadz continues to support research-backed initiatives with the goal of placing a mental health lead in every rugby club around the world.
Nicoll said: “We met a 17-year-old girl earlier this year. She had really been struggling and had gone onto Instagram to say her final goodbyes to her friends and family one night.
“She saw a post we had put out there about not giving up and that inspired her to go out there and seek some help. Now she’s back playing rugby, she actually played for the LooseHeadz Barbarians side earlier this year. She told us seeing that post saved her life.
“Rob Shotton and I got LooseHeadz tattoos for this our seventh year. We always wanted to have a positive impact and talking to that 17-year-old player was a real full-circle moment where we could see what we’ve been doing having that impact.”
They are launching a special collection celebrating seven years of LooseHeadz which is funded through sales of their clothing brand, donations and fundraisers. They guarantee to use 100% of profits for improving players’ mental wellbeing and have received support from rugby legends like Manu Tuilagi and Rocky Clark, as well as current Red Roses players such as Sadia Kabeya.
The team are also set to announce some exciting new plans around their three-step plan centred around Connect, Deliver & Support to provide even more resources for rugby clubs.
To contact Looseheadz or to get more information on a mental health lead for your club visit: https://looseheadz.co.uk/ or email: info@LooseHeadz.co.uk.
