Norwich City’s Heartbreaking Mental Health Film Moves the Football Community

“At times, it can be obvious when someone is struggling to cope, but sometimes the signs are harder to spot.” This is how Norwich City Football Club launched its powerful suicide prevention campaign in support of the mental health charity Samaritans, urging us to check in with those around us.

The poignant film – created in-house and published on Tuesday on the club’s social media – has now been viewed over 40 million times, taking the football world and wider community by storm, and continuing the conversation around men’s mental health that has been gaining prevalence in recent years.

With just over two minutes run time, the video opens with two friends at a Norwich game - one visibly more excited and extroverted than the other. Over the course of the film, we see them in different scenarios - singing along with the crowd, cheering on, or sulking after a loss - however the energy between the two remains mismatched. Ending in an impactful turn of events, the film follows the moving story of the two friends until the very end.

Preceding the campaign film on TV was an awareness line-up graphic that Norwich presented before a game for the second year running. “We contacted Coventry and they agreed to follow us in posting the awareness table 90 minutes prior to kick-off,” says Daniel Houlker, head of media and communications at the club. The initiative began with their kit launch last year - an important time that generated a powerful platform that Norwich wanted to use for good.

A gut-wrenching piece of data guided the way - the average ticket holder for a Norwich FC game is sadly the same average age as those men most at risk of taking their own life, according to the club. 

A public service announcement, the graphic urges people to call the relevant numbers if they or somebody around them is in need of help and reminds us that 125 people die by suicide each week in the UK. The statistic rounds up to 18 people per day or one every 90 minutes. 

“After agreeing with Coventry, we also reached out to the other 22 Championship teams, who all followed suit in posting awareness line-up graphics in the 90 minutes before, starting off with the Birmingham and West Brom game on Friday evening.” Not only this, but Norwich shirt sponsors - Lotus for the front of the shirt, sekura.id for the back and Visit Gran Canaria on the sleeve - all gave up their positions on the kit in favour of the Samaritans logo.

It’s no secret that men’s mental health has been a long neglected topic of conversation, and as the UK Government revealed in 2022, suicide is the main cause of death in men under 50 in the country. In light of this, the game and its wider communities have been increasingly vocal in trying to turn the tide. Earlier this year, the Samaritans partnered with mobile network Three UK to encourage football fans to open up about their mental health through its sponsorship of Chelsea F.C. Similarly, NIVEA MEN and Talk Club encouraged men to open up through the ‘Strength in Numbers’ campaign last year.

Speaking to Sky Sports, Norwich FC’s head of marketing Gavin Beard said: “The response [to the video] has taken us by surprise. Every additional impression that this video gets increases the probability that someone suffering with a mental health challenge will take the steps they need to take to get them onto the right path. We are incredibly grateful to the football community, but also the wider community that have liked and shared the film.”

He explained that the concept of the film was devised and executed by the in-house team, with no external agency support, the benefit of which was seen in the creative control the club was able to exercise on the project. “We never claimed to be the experts in this subject matter,” Gavin explained. “We are a football club with a hugely powerful voice in the community. So it was hugely important to partner with a charity that has far greater awareness. We spent a couple of months meticulously planning the concept itself with Samaritans, and working with them to ensure that the messaging was sensitive and appropriate.”

Ultimately, the film aimed to show that suicide doesn’t always have obvious signs, said Gavin to Sky Sports. “We focused on the two personality types. One clearly more outgoing - one you’d deem the life and soul of the party with no mental health challenges. We wanted to guide the narrative that you’re likely to be less focused on the extroverted type because in your mind they’re okay. But it doesn’t matter what the personality type is. It’s important to check on those around you, no matter how they act day to day.”