Roosters star opens up on 'dark days'

It’s been the toughest time of Connor Watsons life today, an insight into his struggles. There definitely was some dark days. I think you know my family, the support networks went back to my mums for like 6 weeks where because I had to keep my legs straight for a for a fair chunk of time and meant that I couldn’t get into my apartment here. And so you know, just having to like get mum to stay at home from work if I needed to get out of bed, ring her and she’d carry me, sort of put me in the wheelchair. The true test was the mental challenge, sort of flipping the mindset of like why is this happening to me instead of. Or two, why is this happening for me and what can I get out of it? And you know, I was lucky enough to sort of go back and start doing some study again. He also used his time to work on his charity, the Cultural Choice Association. Basically, we want to improve mental health for Indigenous youth. It’s a cause close to mine and my family’s heart. We lost our little cousin back in 2017, which I guess triggered all of us sort of wanting to work in this space, and especially when you see the statistics of suicide and Indigenous youth suicide, especially in real communities. And Watson has partnered with video messaging service SWISH. Who donate money to his charity. When you’re a small charity your hands are tied a little bit so funds like this, they go a long way. And there’s the Roosters highest profile indigenous player. He was in a tough place during the Spencer Lennie Ezra, man racism case. It was a bit of a weird one for me. Obviously Spencer being my teammate and then. Sort of saying that thing was was not good. And you know, he’s got his punishment now. And I think one thing that he did, which he did right, was own up for it straight away and put his hand up. And I know he’s very apologetic. And yeah, I commend him for that. Danny Weidler 9 News.