Life After Footy

I read with interest in the GC Bulletin this week that former Rugby Union International Tim Horan struggled with the transition from player to retirement. This got me thinking to when I finished playing professionally and how hard it was to adapt back into normal life so to speak.

Now when I first started playing grade football, I worked during the day and trained at night, a lot of times doing ten hour days as an apprentice cabinetmaker and then going to training for a couple of hours. Most times by the time I came home and cooked dinner etc it was 9.30pm and time to get to bed and continue the cycle at 5am the next morning.

I finished my apprenticeship, so as I had something to fall back on but in all reality I was never going to continue on in that trade. The day I finished my apprenticeship, I quit and never did it again except for some stuff around the house. Luckily for me, my football career took off and it was a rather long one at that and the game also turned professional, which meant no working.

When I finished in the UK and came back to Australia to live, I wasn’t too worried about work because I was going to buy a business of some sort. I looked at a number of different ones from juice runs, Subway franchises, to a news agency but nothing seemed right. I was also training fulltime with the Brisbane Broncos for a few months to try and have one last crack in the NRL, which meant commuting to Brisbane most days for training from the Gold Coast. I ended up playing the season with the Broncos feeder club the Toowoomba Clydesdales.

It was when that season finished that I really struggled, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, or for that matter, could do. I had no qualifications bar my trade and I wasn’t confident enough to try and pursue that again. As time went on, my confidence dwindled, until I was in a pretty dark place that I certainly didn’t like being in. I felt like a failure and my marriage suffered as a result too and I continuously doubted myself. I was having some pretty ordinary thoughts and looking back the worst thing I did was keeping it all to me. I wanted to tell people but felt too embarrassed to do so as I felt like it was my fault and that I was the only person it was happening too. I wanted to tell a close mate but being a man decided against it, the closest I came to telling someone was Danny Orr a team mate and close friend from Castleford. I told him of a few things but not how low I was feeling. My Mum and Dad knew that I was pretty down but they had no idea just how far down I really was. (till now)

There were a few factors that basically put me back on track and got me out of a dark hole, that I now know many footballers fall into come retirement time. The first one was that I have always been a pretty positive person, who has kept plugging away when others may give up, secondly was my love for my kids. I would see my kids smile, or give me a hug and it dug me out so many times. The last factor was a mate who I played footy with, Ben Ikin. I mentioned to him one day that I desperately needed work. A week or so later, he asked me to come in and interview for a job running the packaging side of his Dad's removalist business. Now I had no business experience at all and was running empty on confidence, so I didn’t hold great hopes for getting the job.

Ben rang me a few days later to say I had the job, now to say I was excited was an understatement. I was double fist pumping, doing the double heal click like the Toyota ad and generally jumping up and down (Funnily enough another mate, Dave Bouveng had fixed me up with a job at Carlton United breweries the same day).  It was amazing how much I changed as a person overnight, once I felt self believe again. I had a smile on my face, I walked tall again, something I hadn’t done for a couple of months.

Since this time I have talked to a large number of former team mates and many have also faced the demons alone without telling anyone. It’s hard to explain why we go through it, as it’s not missing the lime light or anything like that. Maybe it’s the familiarity of being with the boys and talking crap at training and actually being a strict regime. Men will often bag women because they tell each other all their problems that they are having in their life but it’s actually something that men can learn from. As men we tend not to say anything as it may be seen as a sign of weakness and there lies the problem. We let it build up and up inside us rather then sharing it with someone who might be able to help.

I have grown so much from what I went through and have never been back to that hole and nor will I ever again. The advice I offer all footballers is be prepared for retirement. Do some courses so that you can get a job when you finish your career and also network with your sponsors because they are business people who can help you later in life.

It’s important the clubs police this and don’t just get the kids doing personal trainer courses because there are a thousand of them in Australia now. The scary part about today’s players is, many will go through their whole career and will not have worked a day in their life.

Some more advice for players is, if you only get offered $200k a year instead of the $250k you wanted, just sign!! Try and get a job that pays that much in the workforce believes me its hard. In saying that for what Rugby League players put their bodies through they are very much underpaid compared to other sports.

Last but not least, for the players that play up and get into trouble, send them out concreting, or working on a property for a couple of weeks and I am sure they will then appreciate what a bloody good job they have.

This one was a bit heavier, so I apologies’ for that but just wanted people to know what goes on in a footballers life at times, its not all glamour and glitz.

Cheers
Vowlesy