Former England international rugby player Jason Robinson has revealed how he contemplated suicide after an arrest during a troubled phase early in his career.
A flying winger who switched codes from Rugby League to Union, Robinson scored a try in the final as England won the 2003 Rugby World Cup, but speaking to ITV 4 ahead of an upcoming special called 'Sports Life Stories' the former British & Irish Lion shed light on a dark period of his life:
I can remember just being sat in my bedroom with an old knife, an old meat cleaver, I didn’t want life to go on in this way. That night when I contemplated doing it, I wept like a baby. Probably of all the times in my life that I needed my father it was then.
Robinson endured a very difficult childhood and grew up without a father, and it seemed as though he was headed down a dangerous path after his arrest for affray, assault, and criminal damage, but he explained that Christianity and his Wigan team-mate Va'aiga Tuigamala helped him turn his life around:
Had it not been for him, coming into the environment I was in and putting a different slant on it I certainly wouldn’t have the hope that I’ve got now. And hope is something that people can’t take away.
'Sports Life Stories' airs on ITV 4 on Tuesday night at 10pm.
via The Telegraph.
