Transforming Australian culture through sport

Content warning: This story includes discussion of suicide.

Dave Burt doesn’t hesitate when asked why he founded the health promotion not-for-profit Sport and Life Training (SALT).

It was while working as a sports educator in Victoria nine years ago that he received a phone call he says is seared into his memory.

“Dave, we just lost a beloved young 19-year-old boy from our Bonbeach Senior Football Club to suicide,” the team’s coach said. “Please come speak to the boys and help us navigate through.”

It was during the ensuing session with the deceased players devastated teammates that Dave knew he had to do more to address a problem hiding in plain sight in many sports clubs across the nation.

“The kids did not know how to grieve or where to grieve,” said Dave.

“It wasn’t at school, and it wasn’t the police or the teachers that could manage the situation. It was when that coach said ‘Boys, you know that I love you,’ and I think they knew it was true.”

Dave came to the realisation that sporting clubs had the potential to help solve a crisis in mental health.

Seeing the team’s mental anguish up close motivated Dave to found SALT, which helps equip local sporting clubs with the right strategies to enable their members to become better at caring for each other.

It’s vitally important that they do.

Suicide is the leading cause of death for Australians aged between 15 and 44, and 75% of those who take their own life are male.

Dave said he has dealt with the emotional fallout from those shocking statistics on multiple occasions at sports clubs.

“I’d had a role for 18 months with Sports Chaplaincy Australia [before founding SALT] and I worked with seven clubs all of whom had experienced the loss of someone they loved through suicide,” he said.

“Every club said the same thing but in different ways: ‘We never saw it coming.’”

Dave said sporting clubs have emerged as both a part of the problem of the mental health crisis faced by many young Australians, and a potential solution.

On the one hand, with the decline of many traditional bulwarks of societal connectedness such as church membership, volunteering and neighbourhood community, sports clubs remain important community hubs, especially in the country.

So much so, the soon to be released Community Compass report found 73% of Australians think sporting clubs with the community sector.

Sports clubs can also be incubators for undesirable cultural traits that make tackling mental health issues difficult, such as:

• a heavy emphasis on drinking in hyper masculine clubs

• sexualised attitudes toward women

• a "toughen up" attitude toward those who are struggling

“Some of the pressures on men to act in those ways, I knew were segregating other people from being a part of that and were detracting from people’s experiences of playing sport,” said Dave.

He only had to peel back the layer of "manliness" to reveal the caring core of sporting clubs.

“So, seven clubs, never saw it [suicide] coming and when I went in and held conversations with the people within those clubs, some of those factors like manning up and bravado, it all disappeared in the space of the tragedy.

“People were real and vulnerable, and they communicated with each other about how they were going, and I saw another side of them.”

Dave said he saw the potential for clubs such as these to create a safe space where players could show how much they genuinely cared, but it had taken a tragedy for that potential to come to the surface.

“So I felt we needed to do something preventative in this space and harness the great strengths that exist in sporting clubs that care for one another.”

Since 2013, SALT has helped more than 700 sporting clubs lift their game through a range of wellbeing, culture, and leadership courses.

These have ranged from equipping kids as young as 12 to have a strategy for dealing with drugs, alcohol and peer group pressure to providing adult focused responsible coaching based on authenticity not authoritarianism and positive sports parenting.

"We are looking at things from a multiple lens but they all feed into wellbeing and mental health,” said Dave.

One of SALT's most successful initiatives has been the creation of club wellbeing teams.

Integrated within sports clubs, the participants in these teams receive training that helps them to help their club and fellow members connect with the wider community, have open conversations, and destigmatise mental health challenges for men.

“They’re clearly communicated as being available to the rest of the club and are there at the coal face, asking the right questions and either solving the issues or referring to family and friends or specialists in the community.”

At a more strategic level, Clubs with Heart aims to change the narrative of participating senior sports clubs.

"They [clubs] want to be competitive and win premierships and develop players that get into the highest of squads," said Dave.

"But they also recognise that they won’t do that successfully unless they focus on their greater purpose, which is creating that caring community, that respect, that openness no matter your colour, your religion, your ability, sexuality, you will be welcomed into this club, and we’ll find your strengths and we’ll embrace you.

"Clubs are starting to get that. Ten years ago, they didn’t, but now they really are."

Dave said the cross-generational nature of many clubs, which often have junior and senior teams under one roof, places them in a unique position to help their members learn life skills.

"Often during those teenage years, kids aren’t looking to their own families anymore, they’re looking to their peers and those they look up to in social arenas, which the club often is,” said Dave.

"So there’s an opportunity for people to care for other people’s kids and for there to be systems where people know how to look out for each other and ask the right questions."

SALT’s approach has been so successful it is now going national, offering its services to sporting clubs across Australia.

As part of the national roll-out, SALT will use its partnership with the Bendigo Bank – which supports sporting clubs in many communities – to expand its reach.

"Because they often give money to clubs, they are going to be reaching out to the clubs who bank with them and who they typically support through grants to have SALT sessions.”

Dave said the outsized importance placed on sport in Australia made it even more important to create the right environment within sporting clubs.

“In Australia, we put sport people on a pedestal. Therefore, a lot of [young people’s] identity is formed around their sports performance.

“And when that starts to wane, or they don’t get into the highest level or they get injured and have to drop out, many of them haven’t worked as hard on who they are or their values.”

As hype builds leading up to the Paris Olympics, Dave believes more should be done to support local sport.

“We’re not putting a whole lot into supporting local sport because a lot of it funnels into the top end,” he said.

“The Olympics are great and they’re aspirational, but nobody makes it unless the local club supports them first.

“And those local clubs are run by volunteers and those volunteers need support.”

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