Thomas Hal Robson-Kanu | Taking Your Shot

Giving The Game Away

Thomas Hal Robson-Kanu's most famous moment on the football pitch came in 2016 when, against all odds, Wales reached the Semi-Final of the Euros. In the quarter-final, Hal Robson-Kanu scored one of the most memorable goals in modern football history, beating three defenders with one Cruyff turn and putting it past Thibaut Courtois, one of the best keepers in the world at the time. The individual brilliance of the goal warranted it being awarded a Puskas award and to all football fans, it perfectly encapsulated the exciting journey the Welsh side had been on that tournament.

Since that tournament, Hal has continued to play at the highest level of football, playing internationally for Wales and in the Premier League with West Brom. As if this wasn’t enough, he’s also managed to launch a global e-commerce brand at the same time. As Hal says in the pod, some footballers play golf in their free time, some play call of duty, instead he’s decided to use his free time and mental energy to enter the world of entrepreneurship. Since beginning in January 2018, the Turmeric Co has grown to become a leading e-commerce brand in the world, now distributing 300’000 shots each month to over 50’000 consumers. Whilst these figures are impressive and help to paint a picture of how successful the brand has been in a short space of time, Hal says real success for the company will depend on the amount of lives he manages to change.

This opportunity to build a community of wellness, and to help habit-form healthy behaviours in people’s lives, is what stands as his main motivation now. Although the motivation to play in the Premier League was the focus for Hal throughout his teens and twenties, it is now the opportunity to change people’s lives that “goes beyond scoring goals in the premier league and the adulation that comes with it” which we found really interesting. Hal’s experiences in getting to the top of his sport, as well as leading a start-up, have led him to gain an incredibly detailed understanding of the psychology of performance, whether that’s techniques that allowed him to perform in the semi-final of a euros watched by billions of fans, or maintaining positive mental wellbeing when starting a dynamic and ever-evolving business.

In our podcast, Hal’s understanding of the awareness of mental health is clear – in a revealing way, which many sportspeople would shy away from doing, Hal helps paint a picture of the hugely under-reported mental health crisis currently taking place in professional football and the structural reasons behind this. In his words, if it came out “you would not believe it”. For Hal, one of the main reasons for this is fear; players and managers fear under-performing, they fear social media abuse, they fear losing their livelihoods and what this creates is a hush culture, which needs to change.

This podcast was aimed to help display athletes as more than their on-field personalities and we feel this episode is a perfect example of this. It also marks a cool milestone in the podcast journey we’ve been on in the last year. We thank Hal so much again for his time and the ability to meet him in person – we encourage you all to check out the Turmeric co and appreciate the amazing work he’s doing in that space.