Brendan Gallagher’s feature: Big Clive Norling back in charge after the long dark years of battle

Depression – proper full blown depression – can do strange things to the mind as Clive Norling discovered during the seven or eight years when the illness threatened to destroy what had appeared to be a blessed life.
At its height, when sleep was but a distant memory, Norling would rise wide eyed from his bed soon after midnight and slip quietly out of his house in Whitchurch, climb into his car – registration BI6 REF – and literally head for the hills. He would pick up the A4067, pass through Ystradgynlais and then spend the night driving endlessly around the Brecon Beacons.
No road was too small or remote not to venture down during his anguished nocturnal vigil. And having completed one circuit he would set out on another. And another with only sheep and SAS patrols for company. Not until he had seen the sun rise, would he head for home again and collapse exhausted on his bed although sleep still proved elusive.
“It got to a point where I knew every square inch of the roads up there and I was on first name terms with all the potholes,” says Norling. “I could draw you the most detailed map you could ever imagine of the Brecon Beacons just from memory.
“Why was I there? Because I was ill, very ill indeed, with clinical depression. I had been diagnosed by then, I was on medication and I was trying to fight it in my own way. When you can't sleep your mind won't stop racing and you have to find something to occupy yourself.
“I was running away – to an area I have always loved – from a situation which I never envisaged could or would happen to me. Depression was something that happened to other people. But you can't run away from depression, it follows you wherever you go. What you have to do is stop and fight it there and then.
Suicide was an option he contemplated more than once. Indeed on one occasion he was saved only by his dog in circumstances he and partner Mair look back on now and laugh. Well if you didn't laugh you'd cry. Norling, who had been weeping uncontrollably for days, had got up one morning determined to end it all with an overdose and sat in the kitchen pleading with his incredibly supportive partner Mair to let him go. He couldn't handle it anymore and considered it in everybody's best interests if he shifted off this mortal coil as quietly and discreetly as possible.
Mair was having none of that and tried to call his bluff. If he was intent on ending it all, she would follow suit. A tense stalemate developed when Tim their pet Highland Terrier, perhaps sensing the gravity of the situation, scuttled into the room.
“God moves in mysterious ways,” recalls Norling. “As he walked into the room and looked at us pleadingly we both said pretty much the same thing at the same time, ‘who will look after Tim if we go', and we both laughed. It dispelled the tension a little and the crisis was over. Mair called the psychiatric nurse and by the lunchtime I was starting five weeks in hospital on the psychiatric wing at Cefn Coed.” He was 56.

Clive Norling, now 64, is possibly the last person you would expect to suffer from depression although we in the sporting community are quickly learning that nobody is immune. The pre-eminent referee of his time, Norling was a larger than life character with a great line in banter that would disarm most situations on the pitch. An extrovert – only he could get away with wearing his trademark tight shorts – he was also a highly accomplished academic and lecturer at Swansea University in Strategic Management and marketing and an individual with an almost insatiable appetite for life. Such alpha males are bullet proof aren't they?
“You will have to excuse me if I become a bore at this point but I've had a lot of dealings with depression now and am very keen to try and prevent others going through what I experienced,” says Norling. “Let's imagine you have got a pint glass and into that glass you pour all the stress you accumulate in your life.
“There is stress everywhere even when you think you are flying and on top of the world. Obviously there is anxiety, tiredness, burning the candle at both ends, relationships, finances, job worries, family matters but there is also that perfectionism and obsession and attention to details that exists in many professions, not least among sportsmen. When you are pouring that amount of passion into something, it can be very stressful even when you get the rewards for your efforts.
“So all this stress goes into the pint pot and hopefully – if you get your life balance correct and learn how to relax and get your priorities right – it doesn't spill over. You contain the stress. But the moment that pint glass does spill over things can go very wrong, very quickly. And you need to be on guard against that constantly because your pint glass may be much fuller than ever you think. And when that happens it takes just a minor incident or setback to send you over the edge.”
For Norling the descent into hell was very slow and subtle but looking back he can see the process all so clearly. First he went from an amateur rugby man, doing it for fun, enjoyment and love of the game, to being the salaried WRU director of referees. It was a big shift although coming from being an experienced university lecturer, and indeed a former building society manager he assumed he would take it in his stride. But the truth is suddenly his hobby was his job and there were targets, quotas, responsibility and, being Wales, back biting.
He didn't enjoy the politics and machinations. At one stage he came across an agenda for a referees' board meeting in which there was a vote of no-confidence in him although he was quickly assured that was just a clerical error and it was hurriedly scrubbed out before the meeting started. What was all that about?
Not daft, he could read the signs and aware of some mutterings in the background eventually resigned after four years, fairly amicably he thought, so much so that he worked out his six months' notice. After a break of a year his request to ‘do his bit' and re-join the referees' assessors list (travel expenses only) was summarily turned down. Now Norling no longer had a job or indeed a hobby. It was a double whammy.
Hurt and rejected much more than he was ready to acknowledge, Norling threw himself wholeheartedly into a Phd and his thesis – an investigation into the strategy making process in non-profit organisations (senior Welsh rugby clubs) – which might not make your pulse race, nor indeed mine, but was grist to the mill to Norling given his background. It seemed like a good idea – “I've been called every bloody name under the sun as a ref so I thought being a doctor would be nice!” – but his studies quickly became an obsession not an outlet or distraction.

For 12 hours a day, seven days a week he would work away in his study and his social life went to pot. He started to withdraw from the world he had known and became a hermit. He started losing interest in food, in fact he lost his taste altogether, a considerable inconvenience for a man who normally loves his grub.
And then the glass spilled over. Just like that. His father nearly died when the hospital delayed an operation on a grumbling appendix. Eventually he had to undergo an emergency operation on a burst appendix and recovery was much more painful and prolonged than it should have been.
“Once my father was out of immediate danger, I just crashed totally and the depression enveloped me. I knew I had to get to the doctor's and he did the Becks test, which is really a simple tick box question and answer, and straight away it was perfectly obvious that I had depression. And of course the diagnosis depressed me even more. I didn't know how to handle it or fight this thing. My weight dropped from 16 stone something to 12 and half stone, I cried all the time, I would get muscle spasms, I couldn't concentrate on anything for more than five minutes, I couldn't face the world outside. All the classic symptoms.
“It was seven years before I finally got on top of things and it only really got better after it bottomed out around the time I wanted to end it all. You can't go any lower than that so everything thereafter was a step in the right direction. The recovery process from that point is like tipping a chainsaw over on its side, it's full of sharp jagged edges – the highs and lows – but the trend is slowly upwards.
“I suffered two massive dips when first my mother and then my father passed away and there were other setbacks along the way. I had a very serious illness in August 2005 – not to beat about the bush my testes exploded and there was a large infected mass in my stomach.
“The last words I can recall from the nurse when they put me under at the hospital were, ‘quick we have got to open up this man immediately or we are going to lose him'. That was on the Friday.  I came around on the Monday morning and, as I woke, I could literally hear those last words being said. I looked around for a few seconds. Is this heaven or the other place? And then I realised I was still in a hospital ward. Although I was euphoric for a few days, after that I had another big dip. You live on a roller-coaster – the dominoes effect they call it – until you get depression under control.
“I had two five-week spells at the Priory in Bristol and at £500 a day that dug deep into our savings. It's a great place for those with alcohol addiction, drug issues and eating disorders but if I'm honest it didn't work for me when it came to my depression. At best it was a bolthole, somewhere to hide.
“Mair is the heroine in all this. She stood by me 100 per cent and without her I wouldn't be here now. I was talking to a former Welsh international recently – a household name – and he admitted he had suffered with depression and that his wife had left halfway through the nightmare. My admiration for him, which was already high, went up tenfold. To have come out the other side without that rock to lean on was an extraordinary achievement.
“I could pick a Depression XV to take on and probably beat the world from past and recent rugby internationals I know from all over the place to have suffered badly from depression, simply from conversations I have had with them.
“I, of course, respect their confidentiality but two or three have gone public recently – Bobby Windsor who admits to his own suicidal thoughts, Delme Thomas who has been very honest about his spells in a psychiatric hospital and Gareth Thomas who went very close to the edge during a traumatic time in his life. All three have written about their experiences wonderfully well.
“But there are many others and some of the names would make your gasp. No surely not him? He was indestructible and so confident and accomplished. He was touched by the gods, so talented in everything he did. Surely he didn't suffer from common and garden depression. Thank God the subject is no longer taboo and more and more sportsmen and women are discussing it openly. It's always been there and won't go away but we can handle it better.”
Norling believes he has had his depression under control since late 2010. After a seven-year gap he returned to his studies and completed his Phd from Cardiff University and, having bumped into a number of medics there, he agreed to help then with their case studies and then, in effect, become a National Centre for Mental Health champion, talking candidly to those who want to listen.
“The year of 2015 is a very high profile one for rugby and although it has been a very tough and private struggle I am more than happy to talk about the issues. The subject is much too important to bury and in terms of the rugby, in the professional era, it is something we must tackle headlong.
“These are early days in our evolution but my instinct is that this will be a big issue. You don't earn enough money from rugby to ‘retire' when you finish playing – not that I would ever recommend that anyway. You need to fill that hole, you need to ‘do' something for your sanity but how do you ensure that naturally driven obsessives and perfectionists – like many rugby players are – don't overdo it? We as a sport need to keep a close eye on this.”