Sport, mental health and a Mayo legend

LEE Keegan and Niall Breslin have played in front of crowds nearly all their lives – but they’ve rarely faced an audience quite like the one that will gather to hear them converse in Westport Town Hall on Friday, November 17.

Breslin, better known as Bressie, wears many hats. He’s a musician, former professional athlete, outspoken mental-health campaigner, a PhD candidate and now host of the multi-award-winning mental-health podcast ‘Where Is My Mind?’.

His guests come from all walks of life, not just the mental-health sphere. Since launching the podcast three years ago, Bressie has sat down with everyone from U2 bass player Adam Clayton and darling of The Liberties Imelda May to Tánaiste Micheál Martin and Mayo’s own WHO boss, Dr Mike Ryan.

These conversations amount to a deep, meaningful and informative exploration of a topic very close to Breslin’s heart and that remains quite taboo among men. But it’s also, in his words ‘quite irreverent and funny and heartwarming’.t

“The number one thing about live anything is entertainment. That’s your starting point. If you’re not entertaining and holding attention it’s game over,” Bressie tells The Mayo News ahead of the Westport Town Hall gig.

“If you want light and shade, you want a bit of craic, you want a bit of vulnerability, you want a bit of emotion, you can’t just give people emotion all the time. They are just going to burn out by the end of your show.”

‘Where Is My Mind’ has already reached thousands of people across the world. So why bring a podcast out on the road when it can be accessed at the touch of a smartphone screen?

Given the ‘inordinate level of work’ that goes into producing something that rarely earns you a living, Breslin says that live shows have ‘become crucially important in podcasting’.

“I’m not talking about entertainment and music. It is a niche area, so you have to get on the road,” he says.

“We talk to all sorts of people, academics, experts, lived experience, and you have to come prepared, and it’s tiring.

“It’s nice to be able to get out and socialise – God help us, be in front of people – and actually I realise that where I am most comfortable is on a live stage.”

He loves playing the sweaty, noisy live venues with The Blizzards, but venues like the Westport Town Hall have ‘a different buzz’ about them. “They are a hell of a lot more intimate, and I absolutely love theatre setups,” he says. “What I like about theatres is you are not from a place of hierarchy. You’re not speaking at people, you’re down below them. You’re actually trying to be part of it, you’re trying to engage.

“Sometimes I think with live music you’re standing on a stage and you’re there to kind of almost intimidate the audience. This is completely different. You need to be part of the audience. That’s how you make it work and that’s why theatre settings are just perfect for this type of show.”

His guest on the 17th needs no introduction to a Mayo audience. The pair have a lot in common too.

Bressie played county Minor for Westmeath before playing professional rugby with Leinster. He can analyse Gaelic football as well as any of Keegan’s Sunday Game colleagues. Lee Keegan has never been one to hold back, on or off the field, and nor has Breslin. They seem like a match made in heaven.

“I think what I’d like to talk to him about is that place within him that’s never been wounded, that’s driven that level of belief and that level of passion, and also talk about that idea that he’s probably [among] the greatest top five footballers of all time,” Bressie says.

“Things like disappointment, rejection, how do you come back with that stuff, how do you deal with that stuff and, you know what, remove GAA and Mayo out of the equation – how do you deal with it, Lee? What comes with it? With your family, with all of the other stuff that comes with being a GAA player that we don’t talk about. It’s that side of him you want [to explore]. On a Monday after an All-Ireland final you come back and your family’s there. Are you able to look at them and go, this is all that matters? That type of stuff.”

The Mullingar man could have made it as an inter-county footballer. Instead, he chose a professional rugby career – one that was swift, anxiety-ridden and injury-plagued. Were he a young man again, Breslin reckons he would not have been able for inter-county football in the age of social media.

Why? “The abuse, the belief that there’s an ownership over you,” he says.

“No GAA player, no footballer, no athlete on earth goes out to fail, none of them do,” he explains.

“I don’t know about Lee’s situation. I’ve a lot of friends who are top GAA players who just really struggle with this and really struggle with the belief that people can talk about you like that. Nobody has the right to do that. You can never get personal on a player.

“You can say that was a sh*t game, you’re better, you should have played better than that. It’s constructive, that’s exactly what you’d expect. Your coach will say that to you. When you get personal, it’s simply not acceptable and it shouldn’t be accepted. A lot of what we see in GAA gets very personal and very vicious, and I’ve no time for it.”

We can’t help but wonder if that sort of commentary has anything to do with Mayo’s failure to win Sam. He agrees to an extent, but takes issue with the word ‘failed’.

“I think it must play in their heads. But calling a team that consistently gets to an All-Ireland final ‘failures’ is a ridiculous statement. You can’t.

“They are a brilliant team, they’ve consistently performed, they’ve consistently put it up, they are always at the top of the agenda when people talk about it. People love to say things like Mayo are… but they don’t say things like ‘Mayo are always there. Always there’.

“And to turn up every year and train during the sh*t winters, soggy pitches, and the sh*t that they have to do that nobody ever sees, and consistently get to All-Ireland finals is a testament to their characters.”

What will our Leeroy have to say about all of this?

We’ll soon find out.

• ‘Where Is My Mind?’ with Niall Breslin, featuring special guest Lee Keegan, takes place in Westport Town Hall on Friday, November 17, at 8pm. Tickets are available from www.westporttheatre.com.