Next month Tranmere Rovers Football Club will transform the Kop stand of their home ground, Prenton Park, for a special reason.
On Friday, September 9, the Rovers will be dedicating 135 seats in their Bebington Kop stand to the 135 people who will die by suicide every ninety minutes, the duration of a football game. In place of supporters, the seats will each display a football shirt lent to the club by their supporters to raise awareness of suicide and more importantly suicide prevention.
The fixture has been specifically chosen to mark World Suicide Prevention day, which falls the day after the match, on Saturday, September 10. The World Health Organisation predicts that around the world one person will die every 40 seconds from suicide, meaning that between whistles in a football game, around 135 people will have lost their life.
