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Swindon Town manager Martin Ling. Jon Buckle
Living on the Volcano

'It is so black, totally black. It is as if the world is going to end' - When managers hit rock bottom

Michael Calvin talks to Martin Ling who underwent electroshock therapy in a bid to get well.

A PADDED ELECTRODE was placed on either side of Martin Ling’s head. He was emotionally exhausted, still and submissive.

His world was dark, denuded of basic human comfort. His final sentient thought, as he lost consciousness following an anaesthetising injection in his right wrist, was “I hope this works.”

Electroconvulsive therapy, or shock treatment to use the term which has enduring echoes of the asylum, involves triggering an epileptic fit by passing an electric current through the brain. The aim is to combat severe depression, but the procedure is increasingly unfashionable, since it is ineffective in around half of patients and relapses are common.

Once Ling was unconscious another injection, containing muscle relaxant, was administered. A mouth guard was inserted, to prevent him biting his tongue. A series of high-voltage surges, up to 70 pulses a second for between three and five seconds, caused his body to stiffen. Each seizure lasted between 20 and 50 seconds.

He went through the process five times, at the Priory Hospital in Roehampton in early 2013, after enduring a sequence of acute panic attacks, in which he was convinced he had a brain tumour and was suffering a cardiac arrest. He had fleeting thoughts of suicide, of running into traffic on the northern carriageway of the M5 in Somerset, or steering his car into the path of an oncoming lorry on the A10 near his home in Hertfordshire.

“ECT is barbaric, but only people who have been that low will understand you will try anything in that situation” he says, in a muted monotone which testifies to the latent power of reminiscence. “You go into a black hole. It feels like you are living in a fog. You can see nothing. It is so black, totally black. It is as if the world is going to end.”

Ling is an unobtrusive figure as he sits, drinking a tall, slender cup of latte, in the bar area of the suburban hotel in which he used to conduct individual interviews with prospective players for the three clubs he managed over the course of a decade, Leyton Orient, Cambridge United and Torquay United. Football is his life force, his workplace.

He understands the complexities of candour, the stigma his story represents in a profession underpinned by desperate ambition, absurd pretension and ritual sacrifice. Admissions of a history of mental health issues are, he admits, “a coffee stain” on a strong CV. They deter potential employers, who have bought into the mythology of modern football management.

Men like Ling are expected to be a cross between a sage and a stand-up comedian, a patriarch and a pithead rabble rouser. They are prisoners of perversity, expected to dispense summary justice despite being utterly disposable. Their names and faces are over familiar, due to the tyranny of a ceaseless news cycle, yet they remain resistant to anything other than superficial scrutiny.

Who are they? Why do they submit themselves to illogical, often malevolent judgement? What coping strategies do they utilise? Where, and from whom, do they derive their greatest inspiration? Which philosophies are the most effective? How do they salve their consciences, when it proves impossible to reconcile career and family? Will they change, as the world changes around them?

This is an extract from Living On The Volcano: The Secrets of Surviving as a Football Manager, published by Cornerstone Publishing.

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