From Olympics to Excel, Aussie sevens captain Nick Malouf begins life in banking sector
Within three weeks of leading Australia’s men’s sevens team in front of 70,000 fans at Stade de France in the Olympics, Nick Malouf has already begun his new career.
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TOO often, athletes become lost in retirement.
The end creeps up, they’ve not planned beyond the footy field, and all of the sudden the camaraderie of the dressing room is replaced by an emptiness of identity and purpose.
But Nick Malouf accepted in February that his rugby career was going to finish, and began setting up coffee catch-ups with business heavyweights, finance experts and even World Cup-winning Wallaby John Eales.
Within three weeks of leading the Australian men’s sevens team at the Paris Olympics, Malouf has begun a new chapter of his life in a Sydney CBD office.
“It’s just going to be an adjustment, learning different acronyms, understanding how on Earth I possibly operate an Excel spreadsheet, Teams and Outlook, all these sorts of things which as rugby players, we’re sort of hidden from,” Malouf said.
“But it’s been good, it’s exciting.”
The 31-year-old has landed a job at Commonwealth Bank.
Malouf now works as senior associate, trade finance sales. He is in the institutional banking and markets sector, in a team that specialises in commodities, trade and carbon.
While his career fell agonisingly short of an Olympic medal – Australia lost the bronze medal playoff to South Africa in Paris – he walks away as a history-maker.
Malouf captained Australia to their first and only World Sevens Series championship in the 2021-22 season.
But after planning to retire after the 2026 Commonwealth Games that were due to be held in Melbourne, only for the Victorian government to pull out due to costs, Malouf decided that Paris would be the finish line.
He and wife Aimee welcomed their first child, son Lennox, 18 months ago and that was a major factor.
“You work them out around the big tournaments, so originally I was considering going through to the Comm Games, which was meant to be in Victoria,” Malouf said.
“With the uncertainty around that, I thought maybe it’ll be a bit closer.
“I think having my son recently and a number of other things made me give it some more thought.
“And at the start of the season, I said I’m just going to enjoy playing. Obviously start being proactive and having lots of coffees and making sure that I’m connecting with a couple of people, and hopefully through that process it’ll all become clearer.
“After Perth, around February and the months after that, it all sort of became clear and I was able to chat with my wife and agree.
“And then it’s another thing for me to wrap my head around; ‘OK, what does stopping something that I really love, and taking on what can be a bit of a daunting challenge actually look like?’
“But as I got to meet more people in finance, in the corporate world - I was lucky enough to chat with guys like John Eales and have a coffee with him and go through, like, how did he feel when he transitioned? I think that gave me the confidence to be able to make a choice.
“I’m always going to love rugby and if someone put the jersey there, I’d jump into it straight away. But there’s lots of other things day to day that are independent of that. Playing is the fun part. What do all the other bits look around? What are all the other sacrifices?”
Having completed his Bachelor of Commerce degree, Malouf was armed with an important tool in the difficult steps away from professional sporting life.
“It’s pretty widely publicised the difficulty that the transition can present, and I’m saying this from the perspective of someone that’s had the transition going four days,” Malouf said.
“So I’m certainly not immune. But you want to give yourself the best shot at making it as smooth as possible.
“And yes, it will be bumpy. I’m not thinking that I’m going to have a smooth ride, but I’ve just tried to control as much as I can, put myself in with a really good company, in an area that I would like to understand, that I don’t know terribly much about, how the financial system works.
“But the way I’ve approached it, is I wanted to be in a really good company, with a really good brand, in a team that has really good people in it that are willing to help me learn.
“If I’ve got that, then that’s about as good as I can possibly hope to start with.”
As Malouf began to increasingly consider life after rugby, he also knew the decision was about more than just himself.
“I invested a lot of physical and emotional energy in the team, obviously I want things to go super well,” he said.
“It was also that realisation that I needed to be fully invested in my role in leading the team. And if I was having these thoughts around maybe I want to be doing something else, then I’m probably not the right man to stay on as captain.
“That was the beauty of when I did know I was coming here [to Commonwealth Bank] I didn’t have to worry about that stuff anymore.
“The last two months was so much fun because I had no stress about what was happening after. I could just be so present in there and enjoy the Olympics for what it was.
“It’s tricky when you know that you’re coming to the end and you’re uncertain about what is next, and that had been on my mind for parts of the last season.
“But to have it all locked away before a big event was really good.”
Prior to winning the World Series in 2022, Australia’s previous best effort was finishing as runners-up 20 years earlier.
Malouf’s team won the Twickenham tournament and then finished third in Los Angeles to seal the overall title.
“Winning London, the first tournament that I won as part of the Aussie sevens team, that was incredible,” Malouf said.
“And I felt that relief, after actually having played all these years, thank God I was able to be part of a winning team.
“Then obviously a few months later we won the World Series for the first time, which was mind blowing.
“You have ambition at the start, you set a goal, like a tournament win would be great, and up until a few months prior that was as high as I’d aimed.
“And then and then you win the World Series and it’s just like, wow, I could never imagine that.”
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Originally published as From Olympics to Excel, Aussie sevens captain Nick Malouf begins life in banking sector
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