Two widows unite to transform sport's suicide prevention culture

Debbie Beard and Amanda Thorpe had never met before the day they sat down together at an event launched by the Prince of Wales and the Royal Foundation. What brought them together was a shared, specific grief: both had lost their husbands to suicide within the past eighteen months, and both were determined that their deaths might somehow prevent others.

Matt Beard, the former manager of Liverpool Women, died in hospital on September 20, 2025, just over a year before this conversation. He had held the position at Burnley Women for only two months before his departure. The circumstances surrounding his death remain formally unresolved—an inquest has not yet concluded, though he is believed to have taken his own life. Amanda Thorpe's husband, Graham, was a former England and Surrey cricketer who died by suicide in 2024. His decline had begun in 2022, when he lost his job as a batting coach, and he spiralled into depression in the years that followed.

Graham Thorpe's story, as Amanda recounted it, was one of cascading losses. He had struggled during the Covid lockdowns, uncomfortable with the restrictions placed on players. When the England and Wales Cricket Board terminated his position in 2022—one of several staff cuts following a disastrous Ashes series—he did not see it coming. The shock compounded when a video of him socializing with opposition players after a tour, filmed in a moment of levity, was leaked to the Sydney Morning Herald. In the context of a lost series, what might have been routine was treated as a transgression. Amanda described her husband as entering a tunnel of shame and self-recrimination, convinced he had destroyed everything. He was drinking more heavily. He had begun therapy—ten sessions—but Amanda later learned that he had mentioned suicide to his therapist, something she did not know at the time. When he made a serious attempt on his life, injuring himself badly, she realized the help he was receiving was not enough. He needed more intensive support, but the family did not know where to find it.

Matt Beard's decline followed a similar pattern, though the details differed. Debbie noticed changes in his behaviour after he left Burnley. The team had performed poorly, and he absorbed abuse on social media. He could not speak openly in media interviews about what was happening behind the scenes, so he vented at home. She later learned he had confided in his brother about his mental health struggles, yet when she asked him directly how he was, he would say he was fine—he did not want to worry her or the family. He began drinking more than usual and taking risks. The job loss itself had come suddenly, surrounded by speculation.

What struck both women was how invisible the crisis had been, even to those closest to them. Matt had been intuitive with his players, able to sense when something was wrong with them. Yet he could not or would not ask for the same attention for himself. Graham, described by Amanda as a tough competitor and a happy person who loved life, had lost his ability to think clearly. Everything became a vortex. Amanda spoke of the particular cruelty of depression: you think you are thinking straight when you are not.

The two women were now part of the launch of a new resource called On Your Side, a toolkit designed to embed suicide prevention into the fabric of sport at every level—from grassroots to professional. The Royal Foundation had created it with the explicit aim of making mental health support as routine as warm-up drills and training sessions. Debbie and Amanda spoke to Simon Jack, the BBC's business editor, whose own father had taken his own life when Jack was seventeen.

When asked what might have made a difference, both women pointed to the same absence: accessible, continuous mental health support and a culture in which asking for help was not seen as weakness. Debbie emphasized that sport places enormous emphasis on physical wellbeing but neglects the mental side. Coaches see their players day in and day out; they notice changes. Yet the conversation about mental health remains difficult, even within families. Amanda spoke of how Graham, when he was most ill, had shut people out, convinced he had lost all his friends—a distortion of reality born from depression itself.

Both women were raw with grief and anger, but also determined. Debbie was managing the practical aftermath: lost income, rent and bills that did not pause, school runs, the weight of holding her children together. Amanda had watched her daughters leave for university, leaving her alone with what she called the geriatric dog. Yet they had found each other, and they intended to be heard. They were part of a club they had never wanted to join, but they would use that membership to force change. They would meet again, travel to see each other, and make sure that the toolkit was not merely launched but actually followed—that people knew where to turn, that therapists were accessible, that the conversation about mental health became as normal in sport as any other.