Fergus Farrell on his spinal cord injury, and how learning to ask for help changed his life

In 2018, former Connacht rugby player Fergus Farrell suffered a devastating spinal cord injury. Doctors gave him a 5% chance of ever walking again. Through immense determination, he defied all odds to regain his independence. He tells Helen O'Callaghan about his attempt to row 5,000km across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Galway in 2022.

Fergus Farrell, who learned to walk after a spinal cord injury, is going to walk from New York to Los Angeles while raising awareness of the work of Spinal Injuries Ireland and also raising €1m for the charity. Pictures: Noel Sweeney

I didn’t complete Project Empower — my bid to row across the Atlantic from New York to Galway with my friend Damian Browne.

I didn’t row into Galway. I was evacuated from the boat 14 days in, in July 2022. Damian rowed in four months later.

I fell into a bad place. I was functioning, but I was depressed, empty. Life was just a drag. I couldn’t talk to family or friends. I didn’t think they’d understand or be able to help — I didn’t want to burden them with my issues. Like most men, I tried to figure it out in my own head. But I couldn’t get myself out of it, no matter how much I tried.

And yet I’d gotten a second chance after my initial accident in 2018 and I knew I couldn’t give up now because if I did, I wasn’t going to be here. There wasn’t going to be another chance.

I went to my local GP. I just went in and said: “I’m struggling.” It was the first time in my life that I said that.

He sat with me for 40 minutes and asked what I was doing in my life, and what I was not doing. It helped that he just listened.

'Asking for help is probably the strongest, bravest and smartest thing I’ve ever done. Me finally understanding the importance of being able to ask for help — rather than hiding behind a mask — changed my mindset, stopped me from trying to figure everything out in my own head and being bogged down by that.'

He said: “Look it Fergus, what you’re going through, a lot of people are going through.” 

He suggested anti-depressants, which I didn’t want because I’m on enough tablets for pain. Eventually, I agreed that it was the right thing, though ultimately, because they clashed with all the other tablets, I didn’t continue with them.

 He helped me get counselling. I’ve never looked back. Being able to talk to somebody who didn’t judge — there’s nothing more powerful. Before this, I’d never thought about counselling. I don’t overthink things. I wouldn’t have wasted my time thinking about something I didn’t think I needed.

Asking for help is probably the strongest, bravest and smartest thing I’ve ever done. Me finally understanding the importance of being able to ask for help — rather than hiding behind a mask — changed my mindset, stopped me from trying to figure everything out in my own head and being bogged down by that.

So that was the biggest action, putting my hand up and asking for help. I was 42 years of my life not doing that. I think as men we’re conditioned from birth that asking for help is a sign of weakness. Society tells us that to be strong, we have to be strong-minded, powerful, unbreakable, not a person who has frailties.

'Now I understand that if I ask for help, I’m not burdening that person. And life has just got so much easier, down to the minutest things.'

We’re told ‘get on with it, don’t worry, you’ll be fine’, that sharing a problem isn’t the done thing, that by sharing something you’re burdening someone else. A man’s first reaction when he hears a problem is to try and fix it. So until I was 42, I thought if I shared a problem with a friend, I was burdening him, putting it on him, and he wouldn’t rest until it’s fixed.

And the first thing I’d have thought, if someone came to me with a problem, was: ‘How am I going to fix this?’, rather than just listening. Now I understand that if I ask for help, I’m not burdening that person. And life has just got so much easier, down to the minutest things.

I test it out all the time. I was giving a talk in Finland recently, and a friend and I were going for a walk down through a lovely area in Helsinki. I wanted to go to a place where I could dip into the sea and then go into the sauna, like all the Finnish people do. And ultimately, instead of going around trying to find it, which would have wasted half an hour, an hour, I just asked somebody who was able to give us directions.

And my friend said he’d never have done that.

Asking for help is probably the strongest, bravest and smartest thing I’ve ever done. Me finally understanding the importance of being able to ask for help — rather than hiding behind a mask — changed my mindset, stopped me from trying to figure everything out in my own head and being bogged down by that

• On August 22, Fergus Farrell will take on the extraordinary challenge of walking 4,500km across the US. Over 75 consecutive days, he will walk an average of a marathon and a half (about 63km) coast-to-coast from New York to LA in an attempt to raise €1m for Spinal Injuries Ireland (SII). In doing so, he’ll be the first person with a spinal cord injury ever to complete such a walk across America and the first Irishman to do so in over a century.
• Watch the countdown to Farrell’s historic undertaking live at ferguswalks.ie. To donate to SII, visit ferguswalks.ie/#donate.