Retirement brings its own hard hits off-field for sporting stars, writes Crash Craddock
JOHNATHAN Thurston and Sam Thaiday have said goodbye to rugby league through absorbing autobiographies but there is one thing missing, writes Crash Craddock.
NRL
Don't miss out on the headlines from NRL. Followed categories will be added to My News.
JOHNATHAN Thurston and Sam Thaiday have said goodbye to rugby league through absorbing autobiographies but there is one thing missing.
The need to get the books out before the end of their last season means there will be no chapter entitled The Final Curtain detailing the full emotional turmoil of taking their boots off for the last time.
For all the countless swan song stories written about sporting greats leaving the game, I still maintain we only scratch the surface with retirement yarns.
I’m yet to hear a player put his bleeding heart on the table and tell the absolute naked truth about the humbling emotional turbulence and hidden subplots of leaving the game.
BELT HIM: Titans will not let up on JT
PARR: From skinny kid to rugby league hero
FAREWELL: Thurston a legend league can never replace
I’m talking about the shrinking self-esteem that comes when you find that the coach does not talk to you much any more, when you realise that young kid on the rise who you always had covered is suddenly faster and stronger than you.
When you suddenly cease becoming a man in demand in contract talks to having the chief executive saying soberly “we need to chat’’.
To occasionally lie awake and think “have I got enough (money) to sustain me for 50 years?’’.
These thoughts may not be owned by Thurston and Thaiday after their long-lasting success but they belong to hundreds of first-grade toilers who dedicated themselves to the game and have not got as much as you – of they – think when it’s gone.
LISTEN! Nick Campton and Tim Williams preview Round 25, get the season reviews going and lament their truly appalling tipping skills.
Subscribe to the League Central podcast on iTunes.
Experienced coach John Lang used to tell a tale about what he considered a standard long-serving first grader who played 200 games over 10 years and averaged around $230,000 a year, who did not fret his money away but bought a nice car, had an overseas holiday each year and just battled away.
Lang reckoned by the end of this high-achieving decade our man owned his house and maybe a slice of an investment property but not much more, leaving him to battle away in a brutal world with no major qualification.
For all the retirement counsellors and financial rewards on offer to professional sportspeople these days the landing can be abrasive in all sorts of ways – even for the rich and famous – because the demands of full-time professionalism means sport is often all they ever knew.
Former Wallaby Jason Little, now a successful Sydney-based businessman, laughs at how he became so used to the team manager calling players on board plane flights he missed one soon after he retired.
“We were meeting friends for a skiing holiday but because no-one came up and told me to board the plane I missed it — it was quite pathetic actually,’’ Little said.
Even the great Wally Lewis once admitted the retirement wrench was difficult to negotiate. “In the years soon after you retire you can feel like that item on the shelves in the supermarket which has gone out of fashion,’’ Lewis once told me.
Recently retired Bronco Corey Parker was candid enough to admit in a column for Players Voice that his cool, calm demeanour crumbled in his first few weeks of retirement when he woke at all hours in an agitated state.
“When retirement rolls around even though you think you are prepared you pretty much wake up all wide-eyed in a dark room,’’ Parker wrote. “A black hole. Your comfort zone has been ripped away.’’
Some players near the end of their careers fail to see how their powers are diminishing.
Many years ago I sat next to a plane with former England batsman Graham Gooch on his last Australian tour and he said to me “I just can’t get over how quickly Paul Reiffel is bowling — he has put on a metre of pace.’’
No he hadn’t Graham. You’d slowed down a metre but had not realised it.
As the end nears we are reminded of the words of former Australian Cricket Academy coach Rod Marsh when he used to address a new intake of scholars for the first time.
“The only thing I want to say is that make sure you enjoy your career because it will flash by your eyes and you will always look back and say it was by far the best years of your life.’’
THE GOOD, BAD AND UGLY
THE GOOD: Wantima golfer Cameron Smith has quietly worked his way into 15th position in the FedEx Cup play-offs in the United States. Solid, unassuming and consistent, he is blossoming into an outstanding player and – just maybe – Australia’s next major winner.
THE BAD: The Cronulla salary cap scandal. You might have thought that one major scandal per decade would have been enough for the Sharks. But the peptide scandal has been followed with another unsavoury affair.
THE UGLY: AFL boss Gillon McLachlan’s involvement in the au pair scandal where a French girl was given a tourist visa after a request from McLachlan to Peter Dutton. The kindest possible verdict of this fiasco was that it was a horrible look for both men. Had McLachlan been an NRL chief executive he may have been eaten alive.
Get ready for cricket like never before. FREE Sport HD + Entertainment until the first 4K cricket ball as part of 3 months free on a 12 month plan. SIGN UP TODAY. T & Cs apply.
Originally published as Retirement brings its own hard hits off-field for sporting stars, writes Crash Craddock