An Irish rugby player has revealed he was urged to kill himself by emotional fans after his team’s hefty Rugby World Cup quarter-final loss to the All Blacks in Japan last year.
Jacob Stockdale started on the left wing for Ireland in the 46-14 loss in Tokyo – a defeat, he says, led to shocking messages from supposed supporters.
“You get certain messages, private messages and stuff that are incredibly hurtful or aggressive. After the New Zealand quarterfinal I got messages from people telling me to kill myself and things like that, which is obviously awful,” the 24-year-old told the Irish Times.
“For me whenever I was reading those messages, they didn’t annoy me as much because I knew these people were trolls and they were just trying to get a reaction out of me. I’m sure . . . I’d hope they didn’t actually mean what they were saying.
“Funny enough the ones that really annoyed me were the ones where people were saying that I wasn’t any good at rugby.
“They were frustrating because I felt they didn’t know as much about rugby as I did. It felt that they really meant it [the criticism] and those would be the ones that would annoy me more than the people messaging me and telling me to top myself.”
Stockdale has scored 16 tries in 28 Tests for Ireland but admits he, like the rest of the team, struggled with form in the tournament.
Ireland entered the World Cup as a top contender after picking up significant results in the four-year cycle prior, including a Six Nations Grand Slam in 2018 and two historic wins over the All Blacks.
But all those results went out the window in their second World Cup fixture when they suffered a shock 19-12 loss to hosts Japan. That eventually led to a second-place finish in their pool and, ultimately, their swift exit at the hand of the All Blacks.
Rather than mull on the tournament, though, Stockdale has used the extra time at home due to the Covid-19 pandemic to take a look in the mirror.
“Good sportspeople, whenever they have a dip in form they don’t just do the same thing. They go back and review what they were doing when it was going right,” he said.
“My dip in form probably came around the World Cup time, where I felt I didn’t have the performances that I was looking for. The lockdown has given me a really good opportunity to go and watch all my games from the last four years and realise what was going right and what wasn’t.”
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