Remi’s Kicking On (Kicking Through Mental Health)

A four-page interview with Reading’s Remi Allen, published under the banner Kicking Through Mental Health, in which the midfielder speaks publicly for the first time about her mental health. Allen describes a very unstable upbringing with both parents alcoholics, her mother suffering mental health problems and contact largely lost from the age of thirteen, and an abusive, hostile home with her father alongside responsibility for three younger sisters, from which she developed lasting anxiety. Football was often an escape and a source of self-confidence, though it took years to admit how she felt; a team-mate and best friend encouraged her to seek help and the PFA arranged counselling quickly. She urges readers to speak out, saying it is okay not to be okay. The interview also covers Opta records, her Leeds move and rediscovering belief at Reading.