SUFFERING LOSS is universal – it touches all of us eventually.
Everyone feels it differently, though. And in a game forever tethered to the notion of being for all shapes and sizes, the vastness of grief is navigated in myriad ways. Nearly every single person interviewed for this special report used a variation of the idiom about there being no handbook, no manual, no playbook for handling loss.
In a recent interview with BBC Breakfast, former Leicester Tigers and England hooker Tom Youngs talked of losing his wife Tiffany to Hodgkin Lymphoma. He said: “The loneliness really hits you. It wasn’t until the dark nights came in during the winter time.
“It gets dark here at 4pm. And you start ringing people but it’s still not the same, it’s still not the same as having someone to talk to alongside you.”
With this feature we intend to share some differing stories of grief and loss through our sport, to show the gamut of human experiences – as well as highlighting the help that is out there, and even a positive or two. Our intention is to show the human side of elite athletes. Hey, of all of us…
Dealing with loss
“IT’S DEFINITELY something you think about every day,” says Glasgow Warriors and Scotland full-back Ollie Smith.
In 2019, his older brother Patrick fell from a third-floor window during a party in Edinburgh’s Marchmont area. He was pronounced dead at the scene. It was earth-shattering stuff. However, today Smith, 22, talks openly and evenly about his experiences.
“You almost start to appreciate other things a lot more and maybe deal with things better, just because of the magnitude of losing someone so close, so suddenly as well. You kind of take everything else with a pinch of salt, it just doesn’t matter as much.
“Whether that’s with selection or in general, the things that happen in your life, at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter, things can always be worse. That’s what I tell myself.”
Smith talks of differences in brothers’ personalities. There was bickering when they were younger. Patrick wouldn’t be caught near a rugby pitch. But after Ollie went to boarding school
