NRL great PAUL GALLEN will appear on Nine’s 100% FOOTY every Monday night of the NRL season, debating rugby league’s hottest topics alongside Phil Gould and James Bracey. Tune in tonight at 10:30pm (AEDT) following a bumper round three!
Like many Australians I was taken aback by Ash Barty‘s sudden decision to retire from tennis last week at the age of 25.
What does that have to do with the NRL, I hear you ask?
Let’s not kid ourselves that there aren’t players in the NRL who’d love to do exactly what Barty has done, and just walk away from the sport.
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The intense pressure and scrutiny that comes with playing professional sport isn’t for everyone.
I have spoken to one prominent player who has felt like retiring but hasn’t gone through with it. I’ve got no doubt it has crossed the mind of a number of players. These days there’s so much scrutiny and access to the players, especially through social media, that the joy that sport brings can be lost.
Social media has given every fan a platform where they can express an opinion, and a lot of times that opinion isn’t nice. There are players who read all that, they go on social media and they’re exposed to those comments.
When I started 20 years ago all you really had was the newspaper reports the next day, and they didn’t have a crack at you unless you were terrible. You just moved on to the next round.
Now everyone is throwing up opinions on social media and some players do suffer terribly because they’re reading those opinions, which often come from people who don’t know the reasons.
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It’s a worry, I’ve always maintained there should be repercussions for what happens on social media. It should be a licensed platform, you should be identified, because it’s a haven for cowards to say what they want regardless of how it impacts those on the receiving end.
My Wide World of Sports colleague Andrew Johns spoke last week about how he was lost for 18 months after he retired without the structure that professional sport gave him, and for Barty to walk away from all that at just 25 shows how strong she is.
I can absolutely relate to what Joey is saying, even though I moved into boxing after my football career was over. But boxing is very periodic, you might only fight two or three times a year.
For me, I was lucky to have a job with Nine, and because interstate travel was banned during COVID-19, I ended up doing Thursday night, Friday night, Sunday and Monday night on Nine, and radio on Saturday. So I was busy five, sometimes six days a week.
The whole COVID-19 period actually gave me structure, I know not many people liked it but for me it was a blessing that helped me transition away from playing.
When I was about to retire we’d have functions where former players would come in and talk to us about their struggles, and they said it took 2-3 years to figure out what they wanted to do, and if I hadn’t been lucky enough to have TV or radio I would have been in that boat as well.
What I learned, without a doubt, is that people forget you very quickly once you retire! Once you’re gone, you’re gone, and it’s almost an overnight thing.
Knowing what I know now, my advice to any players is to do your best for yourself while you’re playing, because you are done very quickly.
Barty spoke about having achieved her goals, having won Wimbledon and the Australian Open, but for me even if we’d won a premiership at the Sharks earlier in my career that wouldn’t have been a trigger for me to retire earlier than I did.
Without a doubt the desire to win one was a driving force later in my career, because if I had retired without a premiership it would have left a hole in what I’d achieved.
But I was the reverse of Ash – I wanted to play as long as I could, and it wasn’t until 2019 that I really started to notice that I wasn’t at the level I’d been at in the past.
Everyone is different, this isn’t A-grade rugby league or A-grade soccer, this is professional sport where you have to dedicate your entire life to it.
While we’re on the subject of the abuse that players cop, there’s been a lot of carry-on about Mitch Barnett, after he was sent-off at the weekend for a forearm to the head of Chris Smith.
There’s no doubt it was bad. We’re hearing that it’s something he’s worked hard to get out of his game. But to me it was a reactive thing. You could tell he was trying to go past Smith, who had come into his path a little bit.
Barnett didn’t have to do it, but it wasn’t a full-blooded, pre-meditated thing. It happened quickly. I’ve watched the replay again and Barnett wasn’t even looking in Smith’s direction when it happened. He had his eyes on the ball and Smith was in his peripheral vision.
He got sent off and referred straight to the judiciary. It was bad, it was a send-off offence, and he’ll cop a decent suspension for it, maybe five weeks, something like that. But let’s not hang him for it.
From a player’s point of view, when you’re sent off you don’t need anybody to remind you how much you’ve let your team down, you know you’ve left them with 12 men. You’re kicking yourself for letting your mates down, you’re kicking yourself for letting the club down and probably costing them the game.
You’re feeling about as low as you can go anyway. As a coach, you know the player better than anyone, and you know how much he’s tried to change his game and not be known for that sort of stuff.
There’s no point in anyone piling onto him, he knows he did the wrong thing and he’s going to be suspended. Thankfully it didn’t cause a major injury.
While it was the wrong thing to do, it’s not a hanging offence. Let’s please remember that before everyone piles on and has a shot at Barnett.
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