Doncaster Rovers captain Adam Clayton reveals past mental health struggles and how he fought back

Take a quick look at Clayton’s football career and it’s probably fair to say it peaked in the 2016/17 season when he played 34 times in the Premier League for Middlesbrough.

But that coincided with his lowest ebb off the pitch, as he explains.

"The Premier League year was probably my worst year and it was nothing to do with football.

"I went through a bad time and sometimes you don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.

"If you looked at me every day in training you wouldn’t have known any different.

"I was playing well, but in my brain I wasn’t healthy."

What happened?

"I have got OCD,” he reveals during a candid chat at Cantley Park.

"It’s not just washing your hands, it was more of a thought process.

"I couldn’t get rid of a thought for longer than it should be in your brain.

"Fighting it just made it build and build and build until it’s like ‘I can’t cope with this’.

"If I’d have probably just spoke to my dad the first time it ever happened it would probably have never happened again.”

Instead, Clayton, now 33, wrestled with the demons inside his mind as he resisted help for several years.

"It took probably two or three of years of me being like ‘I’m a man, I need to fight it and get through it’ to get to the bottom of it,” he adds.

"It took me to get quite low. Now I’m in a much better place and have been for three or four years.

"A good routine for me is key. Lockdown made it even more obvious. The first part of lockdown I had no routine, was messy, not really going anywhere.

"I read The 5am Club, it was a good book and I took little bits.

"For a good three or four months I was waking up at 5am, doing my run first thing, journalling. (Before) I would have said journalling is not me but ten minutes in the morning really focused my attention.

"I probably had one of the best times of my life in lockdown just at home. My little girl had just been born and I really enjoyed that time.

"It showed me there’s miles more to life than what the norm is, so I thought ‘I’m going to explore it’."

Audio books, breathwork and ice baths form part of Clayton’s regular routine these days.

“I’ve got a new daughter”, he says, ”if I learn the good ways to live, the right things to do in certain times, I can pass them down.

"You live with yourself 24 hours a day. If you’re not mates with the person in your head you’re not going to have a nice life.

"As a footballer you get a lot of time sat on your own and if you’re lucky enough not to have money issues your brain tries to find some really strange stuff to worry about.

"Being inactive on my phone puts me in a downbeat mood.

"A good start to the day, for me, is important. Winning the morning sets me up for the day.”

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