The Overlap's 'Stick to Football' podcast with Roy Keane and co. has become essential viewing over the past few weeks, as the star-studded panel of ex-footballers speak candidly about experiences from throughout their careers.
Keane, Gary Neville, and Jamie Carragher are all well suited to the more relaxed format of the hour-long chat, while Jill Scott and Ian Wright have been more-than-welcome additions to the traditional Sky Sports panel.
Scott was missing from this week's episode, but the special guest more than made up for that, as snooker legend Ronnie O'Sullivan appeared to discuss his recent documentary The Edge of Everything, which released on Amazon Prime Video last week.
The documentary features some amazingly candid discussions on Ronnie's battle with mental health issues throughout his career, and the strength he has shown to battle back from them time and time again.
On this week's 'Stick to Football,' O'Sullivan discussed this element of his documentary with the panel, and there were some candid and even poignant reflections on keeping a positive mentality as sportspeople.
Even Roy Keane would open up on the struggles he had faced during his career - but, of course, the Corkman would have the last word with a brilliant joke.
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Roy Keane makes brilliant joke after candid mental health discussion
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At around 22 minutes into this week's 'Stick to Football' podcast, a brilliant clip from the recent Ronnie O'Sullivan: The Edge of Everything was played which showed the seven-time world champion discussing how he has combatted mental wellbeing issues during his career.
O'Sullivan would go on to give an intriguing insight into why he views the more important discussion as surrounding "wellbeing" rather than "mental health" and pointed out the important stipulation between the two terms:
I tried to say that it was more about mental wellbeing. You all probably know people who have serious mental health issues...I've known people who've not come out of their house for 30 years and are on 60 pills a month. That's mental health - serious, you can't participate in society.
I don't have that issue. What I have is an inability to deal with pressure that I put on myself. I get in such a bad place and get so down on myself that I then become quite a moody person, and someone that I don't really like. It's kind of like trying to juggle that and not lash out on people.
It's more like a wellbeing thing - can I play snooker and be happy? That's been the goal for me for the last 20 years, trying to be happy inside and letting that be the basis of everything. Happy if I pot a few balls - great! - but if I don't...
Those six or seven years that I wasn't happy, I couldn't go out of my house unless I had a chemical substance. I had no confidence.
Ian Wright and Jamie Carragher would both open up on the mental challenges posed to sportspeople, before Roy Keane chimed in with his thoughts.
Famously one of football's "hard men" of the 1990s, and infamous for his at times harsh criticism of contemporary players, Keane was candid in summing up the different things that can cause issues for sportspeople, before broadening the conversation to bring in external pressures:
I think we could identify with what we were watching.
The demands you put on yourself, you can put yourself under huge pressure. You can make yourself very, very ill from it. Then, if you're not eating properly, there's a whole knock-on effect from it.
People turn to drink, drugs, gambling, women, whatever it can be. A lot of top-level sportspeople have got them kind of flaws. It is about accepting them and trying to manage it. But, also, that's part of your DNA and it's part of your personality.
Again, you're on about knocking yourself with the stuff you put yourself under, but you also have to take it easy on yourself, because that's just part of life, isn't it?
As you get a bit older, there's no endgame. When you stop playing snooker, you probably put yourself under pressure in different ways, raising your children, relationship, or whatever. That'll always be there.
Having suggested an insight into Ronnie O'Sullivan's life outside of snooker, Keane would then finish with a brilliant self-deprecating joke:
As if I know what I'm fuckin' talking about! But you've got to kind of accept it and manage it.
Delete all that bit!
The entire discussion into the mental wellbeing of athletes was a surprisingly affecting segment of this week's podcast, which continues to grow in strength every single week.
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