Not for me Clive: Footballers and sleeping pills (with Mike McGrath)

Fears over footballers mixing sleeping pills with alcohol to get legal high  Today we're joined by Mike McGrath, a journalist from The Daily Telegraph, to discuss a dangerous and insidious trend emerging from professional football. Back in May 2020, Mike wrote this article linked below: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2020/05/25/exclusive-fears-footballers-mixing-sleeping-pills-alcohol-get/ In March of this year, the story was developed on following a report by a tabloid newspaper that highlighted an unnamed England international as one of the players implicated, and even went as far to suggest that scores of premier league players were addicted to sleeping pills.  On this week of all weeks, it becomes apparent that stories of such potential significance can often be lost in the turbulent and relentless world of professional football. So we contacted Mike, and asked if he would be up for talking to us about the findings of his article, how prevalent an issue it was, and whether it was indicative of a footballing culture that put player welfare at the bottom of its list of priorities.  We also took the opportunity to talk to Mike about some of the themes he raised in his interview with Tyrhys Dolan, the best friend of Jeremy Wisten, and his thoughts on the current academy system in this country.  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2021/03/30/best-friend-jeremy-wisten-offer-released-youngsters-care-army/ If you enjoy this episode, or any of our other episodes, please pop over to apple podcasts, and give us a rating and a review.  https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/man-marking/id1506661828 You can find us on Twitter @marking_man and don't forget to use the hashtag #WheresTheTalkingLads  If you have been affected by any of the themes discussed in today's episode, we have listed some organisations below who are there if you need to talk: Samaritans  Call 116 132 for free https://www.samaritans.org/ Papyrus UK Call 0800 068 41 41 Papyrus Website CALM ZONE 0800 58 58 58 https://www.thecalmzone.net/help/helpline/