The general assumption is rugby careers are shortening. The hits from increased physicality and the success of the game is narrowing the window to remain a professional.
Not many players will be striding into their 30s anymore. Too much competition, too many alternative options, too many players ready to go straight off the schools block.
Leinster's 19-year-old openside Scott Penny is not an anomaly, he's a sign of the times.
It’s true there won’t be as many 17 season careers – like I had alongside a good few team-mates – but that doesn’t mean the current crop of players won’t live the professional life for 17, 18 years.
They already are doing just that. Proof comes in the form of Penny and Caelan Doris. They started their ascent towards their current reality at 14-years-old. Maybe even younger.
Now, the money didn't flow until they were 18 or 19 (that will probably change in due course as I remember way back in 1997 myself and Des Dillon received contracts from an agent in the UK. An Agent! For Rugby! We laughed and waited for the prank to be exposed, it turned out to be a genuine offer, but I can only imagine what is coming).
The rising generation of players are only going to lock into this singular, and at times solitary, pursuit before they even enter secondary school. That’s how professional sport works. Look at America and soccer worldwide. Talent is identified when kids are in single digits and they are nurtured into academies and up the grades.
A small percentage make it, with the swell of cash in major US sports and soccer allowing a ruthless streak, but in rugby, in Ireland, you can go down to Willow Park school or other primary school rugby nurseries or mini-rugby at clubs on the weekend mornings to find the next James Ryan and Tadhg Furlong.
The lock who will grow to six foot eight or prop that will settle at about 130kg/20 stone in their early 20s is not hard to spot (yes, there is room for late bloomers too).
Scenario
The examples are evident right now. There are seven-year-old’s bumped up to the under-nines, where they are clearly imposing themselves. If their upward trajectory continues it won’t be long before those boys are thinking: I want to play for Ireland and I want to do it before I’m 21-years-old.
That wasn't my scenario. There were better players when I went to the under-16s Irish summer camp. By under-18 I was beginning to stand out (hence the phone call from Warren Gatland to tour South Africa with the senior Ireland squad). But it did happen with Luke Fitzgerald.
Such was Luke’s ability age 14, 15 that bets were being taken for his name to be stencilled into the 2009 Lions tour of South Africa (when he’d be 21). It came true.
That’s happening still but the prospects are younger.
If I was 14-years-old in 2018 I would see a clear path into the pros.
Why not? I’m already better than my peers. I’m playing with the juniors who are a year older and next season I’ll be dropped into the under-18s training squad to see how I cope. Make that team age 15, 16 and a world of opportunity appears before you.
There will be training plans to consume, in order to survive, and specialist coaches will arrive at your door to equip you with the skill-set to play multiple positions until you settle on your best role.
Agents from England may come a calling. You're in the Leinster system but Munster or Connacht might take an interest as they get their recruitment acts together to chase down the European standard bearers.
From the ground up.
Don't get hung up on your lack of talent if you've got the right body shape. The skills can be honed, learned even. Just look at Aussie Rules clubs scouring the GAA underage ranks in search of the next Conor Nash or Setanta Ó hAilpín.
Get to work – learn how to catch the ball – and go around smashing guys. All of a sudden, you’ll be on the map.
Metaphor
Now, climbing Everest is worthy adventure. Aim for that highest peak.
I’m going to be a British and Irish Lion come 2025. James Ryan will be my captain. I’ll play blindside to Sam Underhill’s openside.
World Cup 2027 and beyond.
It’s no longer a crazy idea. Everything is possible in the mind of a rugby playing Irish teenager.
Just do what the coaches and medics tell me and away I go.
Ask any mountaineer and they’ll set you straight on an important metaphor for life: the ascent is unbelievably challenging but the most perilous moment of the climb will always be the way down.
This week the Rugby Players’ Association reported 62 per cent of retired English players are suffering mental health issues. I don’t think that stat is accurate. From my peer group it’s way higher.
Only the very blessed or lucky escape into a comparable career or existence. Your wages are slashed. The tax rebate takes a few months to land and is quickly gobbled up by family expenses – the mortgage, children’s education etc – but worst of all your identity, who you see yourself as being, gets taken away.
Gone. Forever.
It’s hard for a 14-year-old to think about that, even for a moment.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I lived my boyhood dream and life is good but I can tell you these past three years have been a challenge trying to find work that gives me a sense of purpose and responsibility. You’re in sight of 40, career experiences are limited, comparable to what your friends went through in their early 20s.
That’s the reality.
Soft landing
Rugby does not bring untold riches. You wear a uniform every day, until the body yells stop or you’re squeezed out of a team’s budgetary plans.
When it gets taken away you presume what you have learned from rugby can be transferred into the real world.
There is rarely a soft landing. My career was over. My body was in pieces. The end can never be properly planned for.
The mistake some of us make is we view the rest of our lives through the same lenses we used to be rugby players.
We are forced to be process driven. Week by week, day by day, hour by hour. Next game mentality. Get yourself up for the All Blacks, recover; get yourself up for Bath at The Rec, recover; Bath at home, recover; Interpros over Christmas, recover; Champions Cup in January, recover so you can be ready for England in the Six Nations opener.
Life means everyone and everything revolves around Gordon. Let him sleep. Let him eat in peace. Me, me, me.
So you come out of the game thinking, I need a job to mirror the process-driven existence.
Actually, you can do anything you want afterwards.
Only now, three years later, I realise life is way too short to be doing something I don’t enjoy.
Template
Coaching? I’d have loved to do it but I wanted, no needed, to see my wife and kids on a regular basis. Coaching denies this. The workload rises into the stratosphere. The player is responsible for numero uno. The coach is responsible for all the players and the organisation.
Joe Schmidt has established a culture for Irish rugby coaches; others look at his microscopic detail in preparation. Joe openly admits to being a workaholic – and that has become the template for success (That’s why I am not writing about the game itself this week. We all saw what happened. Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connacht ground out victories in clinical and very impressive fashion).
For me, it became a straight decision: coaching or family. The coach never gets to scale the highest peak but you never leave base camp either.
It takes a specific type of character.
The game is going to change, coaching will evolve as well. That’s guaranteed. We will not live in this sweet spot of success forever.
Irish rugby will need to grow because eventually England and France will stop flogging their players and flooding their clubs with foreigners.
Then IRFU will react but it would be fascinating to see them pre-empt this challenge. This means digging into the club system to produce multiple Tadhg Furlongs and Seanie O’Briens. It won’t come cheap.
The system is working.
That’s another day’s work.
