Scotland flanker Kelly Brown has overcome his stammer
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Scotland flanker Kelly Brown tells Brendan Gallagher about overcoming his stammer in The Daily Telegraph.
"Physical pain was a fact of life at the coalface of elite rugby but it was the insidious mental strain of trying to cope with a lifelong stammer that was beginning to grind him down.
"Brown had just concluded a BBC interview on the eve of Scotland’s opening Six Nations game against France last year when he reviewed the tape with horror, so much so that he asked the Scottish Rugby Union press team to contact the BBC with a polite, very personal request that they scrap the item. Which they did.
“I hadn’t realised just how bad it had become, because most of the time you find ways of coping,” reflects Brown. “It was pretty awful and demoralising. I could hardly talk and when I was struggling for a word, like many stammerers, I started blinking and the eyes start rolling. It was distressing watching myself. ‘What must people think of me?’ was the question I kept asking.”
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