{"id":130936,"date":"2025-10-18T22:26:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T22:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/130936\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T22:26:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T22:26:09","slug":"ive-described-myself-as-a-functioning-suicidalist-ex-irish-rugby-fitness-coach-paul-pook-opens-up-to-sinead-kissane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/130936\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019ve described myself as a functioning suicidalist\u2019 \u2013 Ex-Irish rugby fitness coach Paul Pook opens up to Sin\u00e9ad Kissane"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">\nFormer Irish rugby fitness coach Paul Pook is driven by ambition that his suicide prevention project can save lives\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Paul Pook: 'For half of those 22 years I\u2019ve been unable to work. And for some of those years I\u2019ve been working while struggling.' Photo: Matt Browne\/Sportsfile\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/cf5fb8e2-2941-4f59-8d34-c17d304641c7.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Paul Pook: &#8216;For half of those 22 years I\u2019ve been unable to work. And for some of those years I\u2019ve been working while struggling.&#8217; Photo: Matt Browne\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Rewind 16 years to the arena once known as the Millennium Stadium and the victory forever known as Ireland\u2019s second Grand Slam. There was the drop-goal from Ronan O\u2019Gara, the missed penalty by Stephen Jones, and a shared exhale of relief and joy with the end of a 61-year wait.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">In a wide TV angle of the moments directly after the final whistle a member of the Ireland staff can be seen bending down to give a kiss of gratitude on the pitch. That was Paul Pook. He was also in the background of other TV pictures with a huge smile hugging his colleagues. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Irish rugby fitness coach Paul Pook is driven by ambition that his suicide prevention project can save&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,19,67397,17,12392,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-130936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-international-rugby","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-sinead-kissane","13":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}