Peter Fettiplace hadn't spoken to his father in any real sense since he was a teenager competing with a football club for his attention and losing, comprehensively, most weeks. He's thirty-four now. The calls started again three weeks ago.
Middlesbrough Millers sit one point above the relegation zone with two matches left, and Roland Fettiplace's future is, by any measure, in genuine doubt. Neither man has said outright that the two things are connected, though everyone around them assumes they are.
In an unscheduled interview this week, Roland confirmed publicly, for the first time, that he was treated for depression during Middlesbrough's last relegation fight in 2019 — a season he managed through without missing a single game. “I'm not saying it for sympathy,” he said. “I'm saying it because someone in my position should have, back then, and didn't.”
Peter says he didn't know any of it until he read the interview like everyone else. It's not yet clear whether that's the conversation that finally brings them back into the same room, or another one they'll each wait for the other to start.